Condensation trails or contrails often appear behind aeroplanes. During the Second World War, bomber & fighter pilots noticed that they left contrails at some levels but not at others. On a day when contrails were happening, the safest level to fly was just below the level at which they occurred. Any enemy aircraft higher up would be leaving a trail & would be easy to see. This led to a study of contrails & a method of predicting the level at which they would occur was devised.
There r two different types of condensation trail. If u r in an aeroplane on a day with showers around, look at the wings as the plane descends. You will see a trail of what looks like grey smoke streaming from the end of the wing. The motion of air across the wing creates a vortex at the wing tip. The drop in pressure across the vortex is enough, on a humid day, to cause the water vapour to condense into cloud droplets & this is seen streaming from the wing tip. These condensation trails evaporate quickly behind the plane.
The trails we see high in the sky r made by the engines, not vortices at the wing tips. When fuel is burnt, water vapour is produced. We can see this coming from car exhausts on frosty mornings. The water vapour in the hot exhaust gases condenses in the cold air. The same thing happens with aircraft exhausts & the condensed water droplets leave a visible trail behind the aircraft. If the air is dry, the water droplets quickly evaporate & the contrail disappears. If the air is moist, the contrail can last a few minutes before it evaporates.
Water vapour will not spontaneously condense into water droplets. The water has to condense onto something. These r called condensation nuclei. Salt & dust particles r common nuclei. Smoke particles r also good nuclei. If the air is very clean & lacking in condensation nuclei it can become supersaturated. There is plenty of water vapour in the air but it can not condense. An aeroplane flies through this supersaturated air pumping out not only water vapour but also billions of smoke particles onto which the water vapour can condense. A condensation trail forms & stays for a long time. Sometimes these trails can spread out to form a sheet of cloud across the sky.
If u want some amusement, u should look up ''chemtrails'' on ur favourite search engine. There is a major conspiracy theory that condensation trails r attempts by the government to poison the population. This is not the case & never has been.
A rare form of trail is the dissipation trail or distrail. As a plane flies through high-level cloud, the heat from the engines evaporates the cloud cutting a clear line through the cloud. Distrails can be confused with the shadows of contrails. A contrail above a thin layer of cloud will cast a shadow on the cloud layer leaving an odd-looking dark line. It is particularly strange if the cloud layer cannot be easily seen.