Weird Clouds Look Even Better From Space (from NASA)

If you are into clouds, this one is for you. If you aren't into clouds, you will be.

[Note: Please go to article for additional info to each pic & others not shownand clickable pics]

Clouds are fascinating because they take on so many different, beautiful shapes and are constantly changing. Cloud-watching from Earth can be endlessly entertaining, but some of the most amazing cloud patterns can only be properly appreciated from space. Satellites can take in thousands of miles of the Earth’s surface in one shot, revealing complicated and intriguing cloud patterns we could never see from below. We’ve gathered here some of the best cloud formations to see from above.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/9ee61e9f8bdf.jpg[/atsimg]Von Kármán Vortex Street, Selkirk Island

The crazy-looking swirls in the image above may be one of the weirdest cloud formations that can be seen from space. The pattern is known as a von Kármán vortex street, named after Theodore von Kármán. First noticed in the laboratory by fluid dynamicists, it occurs when a more-viscous fluid flows through water and encounters a cylindrical object, which creates vortices in the flow. Alejandro Selkirk Island, off the Chilean coast, is acting like the cylinder in the image above, taken by the Landsat 7 satellite in September 1999. A beautiful vortex street disrupts a layer of stratocumulus clouds low enough to be affected by the island, which rises a mile above sea level.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/ff1a785c8e91.jpg[/atsimg]Anvil Cloud, Western Africa

Under specific conditions, the towering, fluffy white clouds known as cumulonimbus can become flattened into the shape of an anvil. The anvil in the image above was captured by astronauts aboard the International Space Station as it crossed over western Africa in February 2008. Cumulonimbus clouds form when air warmed by sun-heated ground rises. If the warm air contains water vapor and it encounters cooler air, the moisture condenses into water droplets. The air continues to rise, expand and cool as atmospheric pressure and temperature decrease. At the same time, heat released from the phase transition between water vapor and liquid water warms the air. The cooler air wants to fall, while the warmed air wants to rise, which sets up convection cells that feed the tall cloud towers and often result in thunderstorms

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/18388dfad3fe.jpg[/atsimg]

Gravity Waves, Indian Ocean

The gravity-wave clouds in this image look almost like a fingerprint on the stratocumulus cloud layer below them. This intriguing pattern occurs when air below moves vertically to disturb a stable cloud layer, causing a ripple effect. The disturbance can be caused by features of the terrain below, such as a mountain range, but these waves overlie the Indian Ocean and are more likely the result of a vertical updraft caused by a thunderstorm or some other atmospheric instability.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/286b8a653298.jpg[/atsimg]Popcorn Clouds, Brazil

This vast, impressively uniform layer of small clouds over the Amazon rain forest shown in the image above is the product of rapid plant growth. During the forest’s dry season, the plants get more sunlight. This leads to more growth and more photosynthesis, which releases water vapor into the air through transpiration. The warm, wet air rises and cools, causing the water vapor to condense into small, fluffy white clouds that resemble popcorn. (My favorite one)

Source: www.wired.com...

So, i hope you can enjoy. Put aside all the politics, conspriracies, concerns and kick back and enjoy all 13 pages of this display and related info. Truly amazing and it puts into prespective how fragile and delicated, yet wonderful our world really is.

What is your favorite one? I clicked on all of them and I looked over each.. No UFO's.....

Great pictures! Thanks for posting

Wow thanks for these pic's they are awesome looking at these puts everything in to prospective so to speak.

S+F makes a change from some of the ridiculous threads floating round ATS of late so thank you for this.

This is my favorite earthobservatory.nasa.gov...

Keith

[edit on 13-5-2010 by justKEITH]

reply to post by justKEITH


Make sure to go to the source site. Clickable pics-which make it soooo much better. Especially if you have a wide-screen.

I was really like it then. I would love to know how close-up those NASA/Space camera can focus in on (the old can real a match book cover stuff)?

reply to post by anon72


Did that thanks i think they can get in way closer than this but still awesome pics

Keith

Really nice pictures!

Hard to believe we can see them from space when we "don't have the technology" to send people there.

Here's a shot with a lot of interesting clouds, not the least of which is the streaks.

hires

Contrails? Yes, but not from airplanes.

Though these clouds may resemble airplane contrails, the streaky clouds of condensation that follow in the wake of jet airplanes, they are actually ship tracks, clouds that form around the exhaust released by ships into the still ocean air.

earthobservatory.nasa.gov...

reply to post by Truth1000

What are you talking about? Most of those images were taken by people in space.

I understood that.

It is just the people who claim that we didn't go to the moon, we can't put people in space, that kind of thing that gets my goat!

reply to post by Truth1000

Oh.
Sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you were one of them.

Got some more for you anon.

www.solarviews.com...

Makes a little distraction from some of the doom going on in the world right now.

Keith

reply to post by justKEITH


Man, you desreve a FLAG for that one buddy. WOW.

Saving for the big screen tonight.

You could have done a thread on that alone.

THANK YOU for posting.

reply to post by Phage


man, I totally missed that one. And I didn't even think Chem trialsjet streams. Go pick up.

I am torn between what I like more. Shots like that or ones like Hubble.

So different but the beauty and awe factors for both ways is incredible to me.

So Phage. Do you know if it is true or not that the scopes/camera/sypglasses we use can really read the words on a match book cover-laying on the ground? My best friend of almost 30 years swears his dad was in the USAF and his mission was to make the shots onto film and they could do it back then (early 60's/maybe late). Thanks in advance. (I have no idea your background but I appreciate your insights and input on UFOs and Space)

reply to post by anon72

Telescopes in space are good but they aren't that good. Supposedly the best spy satellite could do about 3 or 4 inches. So, if true, it might be able to see that book of matches (if it was one of those big ones) but it the lettering sure could not be seen.

reply to post by anon72


No problem pal just a good job that its pointing down and not up don't want people to start seeing two Suns if you know what i mean

Keith