Photos of the New York City night sky taken one year apart illustrate how the coronavirus pandemic has affected air traffic

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Photos of the New York City night sky taken one year apart illustrate how the coronavirus pandemic has affected air traffic
Air traffic in April 2019, left, and air traffic in April 2020.Eran Bendheim
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Two photos taken a year apart illustrate just how much demand for air travel has plummeted since the start of the coronavirus.

Eran Bendheim, an Israeli photographer and web developer living in New York City, captured air traffic in the night sky in April 2019 and again in April 2020. When placed side-by-side, the images show how air traffic has greatly reduced above the city.

"I shot them from my living room window facing north. We are lucky to be on the sixth floor in Chelsea, Manhattan, where we have a nice view of the Empire State Building on the right and Hudson Yards on the left," he told Business Insider.

He chose April because it has some nights that are cloudless. Additionally, "there is less distortion from heat in the air, and if it is not too cold, there won't be any chimneys producing heat," he said.

In 2019, Bendheim captured air traffic by accident while trying to photograph star trails, which are "the continuous paths created by stars, produced during long-exposure photos," according to EarthSky.

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Photos of the New York City night sky taken one year apart illustrate how the coronavirus pandemic has affected air traffic
Air traffic in April 2019.Eran Bendheim

Though he didn't mean to shoot the air traffic, he describes it as a "nice mistake." "The air traffic noise was an interruption that created unexpected trails in the sky," he said.

"The traffic you see in the year-old photo is airplanes heading to LaGuardia or JFK. Some of them are also police, tourist, or traffic TV helicopters flying around," he said.

In the photo from 2020, the lines are from star trails, with no interruptions from air traffic.

Photos of the New York City night sky taken one year apart illustrate how the coronavirus pandemic has affected air traffic
The night sky in April 2020.Eran Bendheim

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"In the photo taken the same week a year later under lockdown, you're only seeing the star trails as circular even lines. The dot in the left side is the North Star," he said.

The photos illustrate just how much air traffic has been affected by the coronavirus

A previous Business Insider report analyzed flight data from OAG, an aerospace data and consulting company.

According to that data, during the first full week of April 2020, there were only 287,760 flights globally compared to April 2019, which saw 733,576 flights. That means the total number of flights fell 60.8% year-over-year.

In North America, there were 102,319 flights in the first week of April 2020, compared to 204,297 flights in April 2019, meaning that the total number of flights fell about 50% year-over-year, according to the report.

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