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Vortex-street-1
1999-09-15
- Classification
- Photograph
- Museum
- Wikimedia Commons
- Credit line
- http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=3328, Archive link Original JPEG, Archive JPEG
- Rights
- Public domain, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Kids profiles and older: it shows nature, places, still life or a children's book. How works are placed
About this work
This Landsat 7 image of clouds off the Chilean coast near the Juan Fernández Islands (also known as the Robinson Crusoe Islands) on September 15, 1999, shows a unique pattern called a "von Kármán vortex street." This pattern has long been studied in the laboratory, where the vortices are created by oil flowing past a cylindrical obstacle, making a string of vortices only several tens of centimeters long. Study of this classic "flow past a circular cylinder" has been very important in the understanding of laminar and turbulent fluid flow that controls a wide variety of phenomena, from the lift under an aircraft wing to Earth's weather. Here, the cylinder is replaced by Alejandro Selkirk Island.
