# Vortex-street-1

- By: Robert Cahalan, NASA/GSFC
- Date: 1999-09-15
- Classification: Photograph
- Credit line: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=3328, Archive link Original JPEG, Archive JPEG
- Museum: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vortex-street-1.jpg)
- Rights: Public domain
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/commons/thumb/2/2c/Vortex-street-1.jpg/1920px-Vortex-street-1.jpg
- Who can see it: Kids profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

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.