Have you ever star-gazed while flying in an aircraft at night? You must have noticed that aircrafts use lights that make them look like tiny bright objects similar to shooting stars at night.
However, the fact is that the strong lights spotted from the sky are not actually headlights. Traditionally, pilots do not use headlights while flying planes. There are a number of illuminations that perform varied functions.
The lights that resemble cars and motorbike lights are landing lights used by flight decks while approaching an airport. They are positioned differently in different aircrafts from the wings to the main body of the aircraft.
These lights enable the pilots to land the aircrafts at night as well as make the aircraft visible to anyone around the vicinity. Some pilots, however, may flash their landing lights when they are close to the landing destination and also to enable the air traffic control tower to know when the plane is landing.
There are also some other lights on the planes like red and green coloured LEDs placed on each wing of the plane to show in which direction the aircraft is headed. The green light is to go right and red light is to go left. These lights remain turned on till the aircraft lands on the runway.
The landing lights are compatible with temperatures ranging from -54C to 71C. The maximum intensity of the lights is 600,000 candela that offers approximately 600,000 the luminous intensity of one candle.