A lot of people were saying that the photo had to be manipulated, so the photographer posted the following:

"I waited a year or two to get a "contrailed" plane during the late afternoon thru a moon.

On the 3rd of January, 2001, I watched as many "high flyin' jets" missed the moon at aproximately 3:45 PM then I left the vantage point where I was shooting (The Boston Herald rear parking lot). While driving to the front parking lot where my assigned parking space is, I noticed a jet in a different position. Entering the US East coast at Boston, this jet was a little more south than the others, so I rushed back to the original spot, knowing there was only a minute before it would come near the moon.

I positioned my lens, a 600mm with a 2x teleconverter, and a Canon digital camera (making it an 1800mm lens), against a jeep and held my breath when it seemed the plane was going to miss. I prefocused on the moon. I had the Canon camera at 1/200th on shutter priority and 3/4 of a stop of overexposure. That gave me about 1/125 at F8 at 400ASA. Then with about five seconds before it "hit" the moon, I looked into my camera and could not find the moon. I found the moon with a second left and the first picture I made had some motion blur. The second picture is the one we are discussing. In the third picture, the plane is sharp due to a bit of panning and the moon is out of focus.

I was shaking due to the pure excitement of the chance encounter the plane had with the moon. It was a beautiful sight. I drove back and walked into the Herald shaking. I had viewed the back of the camera in the car and all I needed to find out now was: was it sharp. Well, I had a bit motion blur and a bit of the softness that one gets with digital before the sharpening. I did sharpen it moderately. The problem that I had, was the white jet's highlights tended to blow out in splotches. The plane was an Air India Boeing 747.

If anybody would like to check out the other photo (split second after this photo) it is posted on: http://www.airliners.net

You can search my name and press "show me the photos". I have over 100 aviation photos on this cool web sight. I am an aviation buff......