Cool Clouds and Condensation

• Navy Lieutenant Ron Candiloro creates a shock wave as he breaks the sound barrier in an F/A-18 Hornet. The shock wave is visible as a large cloud of condensation formed by the cooling of the air.
  
  
  

  Ensign John Gay, US Navy

• Outside of Flagstaff, Ariz., the San Francisco Peaks are capped by a formation known as a lenticular cloud. Because the mountains rise almost 12,000 feet up into the sky, air is forced to rise above and is cooled significantly, resulting in these saucer shaped clouds. High above the cloud formation, the Milky Way Galaxy appears to take on it's own cloud-like appearance.
  
  
  

  Dan & Cindy Duriscoe / Flagstaff Dark Skies Coalition

• Floating high above a cloud covered Earth, Mission Specialist Bruce McCandless appears to be all alone in space. Using a Manned Manuevering Unit (MMU) and a nitrogen jet-propelled backpack, McCandless was able to go "free-flying" to a distance of 320 feet away from the Space Shuttle Challenger.
  
  
  

  NASA

• This strange and unusual cloud formation, called a hole-punch cloud, is caused by falling ice crystals. The ice crystals could originate in a higher cloud and fall. If the air has just the right temperature and moisture content, the crystals will absorb vapor as they fall and thus continue to grow. Holes are formed when supercooled water droplets in shallow cloud layers freeze (initiated by the falling ice crystals, sometimes facilitated by exhaust from a passing jet) and release their heat of fusion, which warms the air and evaporates the surrounding cloud.
  
  
  

  Gary Beeler, National Weather Service

• A C-17 Globemaster III from the 14th Airlift Squadron, Charleston Air Force Base, S.C., releases flares over the Atlantic Ocean near Charleston during a training mission. The "smoke angel" is caused by the vortex from the engines.
  
  
  

  Tech. Sgt. Russell E. Cooley IV, U.S. Air Force

• This close-up view of Hurricane Isabel was taken by one of the Expedition 7 crew members on board the International Space Station. In addition to the station's cameras, NASA satellites provided imagery of the storm as it approached the eastern seaboard of the United States. Hurricane Isabel was the costliest and deadliest hurricane in the 2003 Atlantic hurricane season.
  
  
  

  NASA

• The drifting smoke plume that resulted from the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis takes on an artistic appearance. The twisted plume was photographed high above NASA's massive Vehicle Assembly Building shortly after launch. The NASA structure is the largest single-story building in the world. Rockets frequently create picturesque plumes during launch.
  
  
  

  Ken Thornsley, NASA