Satellite imagery often reveals patterns we might struggle to see from the ground. Here Gaudalupe Island off the western coast of Mexico perturbs the atmosphere into a series of vortices. Air flowing across the open ocean gets deflected around and over the rocky, volcanic island, creating a line of vortices that get shed off one side of the island, then the other. The pattern is commonly referred to as a von Karman vortex street, and it appears in the wakes of spheres and cylinders, as well as islands. The two rainbow-like bands framing the vortex street are an optical phenomenon known as a glory, which NASA Earth Observatory explains here. (Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory)
Celebrating the physics of all that flows