The South Sandwich Islands are a remote group of eleven small volcanic peaks arranged in an arc in the southern Atlantic Ocean.
The South Sandwich Islands are a remote group of eleven small volcanic peaks arranged in an arc in the southern Atlantic Ocean. They sit about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) northeast of the Antarctic Peninsula and within the Scotia Sea, a frigid body of water littered with icebergs and under the sway of the powerful Antarctic Circumpolar Current.
Spread across an often cloudy region known as the Furious Fifties, the steep, conical islands have persistent westerly winds sweeping past them. This combination of winds and topography helps produce a range of unusual and beautiful cloud types, including wave clouds, volcano tracks, and lenticular clouds.
Whorls of air rotating in alternating directions formed behind three of the islands—Visokoi, Candlemas, and Saunders—to create the swirling patterns seen in this image, captured by the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) on the NOAA-20 satellite on February 24, 2025.
Read more at NASA Earth Observatory
Image: NASA Earth Observatory image by Wanmei Liang, using VIIRS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE, GIBS/Worldview, and the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS).
