Above the Storm

Space Weather.com ^ | February 25, 2008 | Dr. Tony Phillips.

[AFPhys]

ABOVE THE STORM: The afternoon sky darkened. Grey clouds billowed to the heavens. Thunder shook the ground and lightning danced overhead. The first droplets of heavy rain were just hitting the ground when the spaceship flew by....

This really happened on Feb. 5th when the International Space Station (ISS) flew over western Africa during an afternoon thunderstorm in Mali:

Orbiting Earth 200 miles high at a speed of 17,000 mph, astronauts took the picture using a Nikon D2Xs peering through one of the space station's many windows. It shows an enormous anvil cloud. Anvil clouds form in the tops of thunderstorms 5 to 10 miles high and consist mainly of ice. They get their anvil shape from the fact that the rising air in thunderstorms expands and spreads out as the air bumps up against the bottom of the stratosphere. There's no new science or meteorology in this photo--just a shot of rare beauty.

3D ANVIL: Grab your 3D glasses. Graphic artist Patrick Vantunye of Belgium has created a red-blue anaglyph of the space station anvil, described below. One look will put you in orbit!

[AFPhys]

I just about posted the 3D image instead of the link ... however, it is nearly 500kB, so I elected to let you click. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

I have, or rather, my daughter has, two pairs of 3D glasses. The image didn't work well with the first pair, but with the second it is tremendous! In 3D, you can't help but see that the three building thunderheads in the relative foreground (right, middle, left) are outside the anvil, and that the huge anvil is clearly and literally overshadowing the other clouds further than those building clouds. It's worth hunting up the 3D's if you have 'em. Both pictures are worth looking at even if you don't.

I wish they had given altitudes for these formations. The anvil is probably on the order of 45,000ft, but it could be somewhat lower or much higher than that.

[AFPhys]

Someone undoubtedly has a ping list appropriate to this “pretty weather picture” article...

[ladyinred]

That is one of the coolest things I have ever seen!!!

[AFPhys]

Thanks. I thought so, too!

See if you can locate some 3D glasses, and look at that one!

It really is worth it - maybe even download and save it for a time that you do find some.

[AFPhys]

It is amazing how big those guys are. When you see them from the ground, they are often obscured by other huge thunderclouds, so this is an unusual sight. This one is dwarfing the building cloud on the right, and I’ll bet that is well over 30,000 feet high, and miles in extent. The cloud this anvil is emanating from at the right center is a really massive storm... look under the anvil at how wide it is!

[xcamel]

Very Cool.

[neverdem]

Thanks for the ping, but the last link doesn’t work.

[DollyCali]

I have no official list to ping but will select a few of my science oriented pals.

thanks for ping AFPhys! quite interesting

[NormsRevenge]

Very cool, Thanks for posting this.

[Northern Yankee]

Outstanding~

Thanks....

[AFPhys]

GRR Sorry The links in the story were relative links, I guess. I corrected the photo link, but did not correct others. Here is the correct link for the 3D Rendering of Anvil which is 480kB or so.

[AFPhys]

neverdem pointed out to me that the 3D link didn’t work... sorry, all... I’ve put a usable link in post#11.

[DollyCali]

Thanks. . what a great pix..

[Northern Yankee]

That is so amazing!

Thanks...

I remember my father saying how much he used to love flying those B-29's to Guam on mornings filled with clouds. He said it made those long flights from Japan much more interesting.

I can see why.