Actinoform clouds pop up off the western coast of Australia.
From the ground, we are used to seeing clouds as puffy balls, wispy bands, or long streaks. But they also form other distinct shapes—some of which are only visible from space.
The image above shows a class of clouds known as actinoform. Derived from the Greek word meaning “ray,” an actinoform cloud is a collection of shallow clouds that organize themselves in a distinct, radial structure. Sometimes the cloud system appears with a leaf-like structure or in a spokes-on-a-wheel pattern, as in the image above, with radiating arms called actiniae.
“Actinoform clouds take slightly different forms, but the general structure is consistent,” said Michael Garay, a cloud researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Actinoform clouds will sometimes appear in lines, but in this case they appear more randomly distributed through the cloud field. The image was acquired off the western coast of Australia by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite on January 29, 2020.
Continue reading at NASA Earth Observatory
Image via NASA Earth Observatory
