Why Does a Plane Flying in the Sky Seem So Slow?

Question

Why, when we lift our eyes to the skies and see a plane flying, does it seem that the plane moves really slow, when in fact at that moment the plane might fly at 800, 900 or even 1000 km per hour?

Answer 1

Because the aircraft is high enough that the rate of change of the angle is slow. It is interesting to note that light planes and commercial jets appear to fly at about the same rate of speed -- the jets fly perhaps three times as fast, but are also three times as high.

Answer 2

Any fixed distance looks smaller the further away you are, just like a building gets smaller the further away you are. A high flying plane covers a big distance in a few seconds, but it looks small becuase it is high up in the sky and far away.

Answer 3

Simply because it so far away.
When you look at a far distance, a slight turn of your head covers many miles.
The next time your riding in the car, notice how objects that are further away almost seem to follow you, while the objects that are close just whiz by.
You can visualize this by placing a dot on a piece of paper and drawing two lines from the dot to both upper corners of the paper. Now imagine you are the dot looking down one of the lines. As you turn to look down the other line, notice how much further the lines are separated the further down the lines you look.
The plane that you see moving so slowly high in the sky is actually covering many km's in a very short amount of time!

Answer 4

Your brain determines the speed of objects by comparing how they move relative to objects around them. Airplanes pass by clouds, which are very large. It is difficult for your brain to interpret the vast distances involved with great accuracy. Therefore, since you see the airplane going by the clouds in a relatively long period of time, your brain interprets that as a slow moving object.

Answer 5

The further things are away from you the slower they appear to move

Answer 6

The way we see things is through light. When we see an image, light bounces off the object and into our eyes. Since light is fast we can see things pretty quick. When we look at things farther away, it takes light longer to travel all the way into the sky to the plane, then bounce back into our eyes. since it takes light longer to travel, we don't see the image as quickly, so it appears that the plane is slow.

Or it could just be that the plane is traveling the same direction as the Earth so it looks like the plane isn't going anywhere.

Answer 7

Its due to your position on the ground relative to aircraft.

Answer 8

Deys jut look dat way dey be movin on pweety fat

Answer 9

its that far away and a lot of space so speed will look slow,

Answer 10

Because the sky is huge!!! When you look up you are seeing miles and miles of sky.