All Ireland's aeroplane traffic in a day is really something

Ever watched the trails made by passing planes on a sunny day?

Well, the folks over at NATS - that's the UK's National Air Traffic Services - have captured all the data for flights in Europe on a given day, creating a mesmerising visualisation form the result.

Starting at midnight with what looks like a stream of meteors headed for Ireland's coastline across the Atlantic, it really is something.

The visualisation is played at 1,440 times faster than real-time flights.

It's not surprising that the number of flights going in and out of London and Paris is enormous, but the web of flights- a whopping 30,000 every day - covers almost every pocket of airspace in Europe.

This is going on over your head almost all the time, but we just can't see it - which is pretty cool, no?

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From the NATS Aero blog.