Image of the day – 16

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every day (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

I spotted this cloud scene in May 2024 and just had to capture it. As you can see, it’s a fine example of multiple horizontal levels of clouds of different kinds. At the bottom are small cumulus clouds, including one that looks higher than the others. That’s just perspective, they’re all at the same level, imagine them sitting on a transparent sheet stretched out from the horizon and passing overhead.

Above this is a grey layer with a fuzzy edge, it’s stratus cloud and again it’s a flat sheet at a higher level than the cumulus layer. The third layer is altocumulus, a third sheet at a higher level again. The stratus is semi-transparent near its fuzzy edge, you can see a higher layer through it.

The fourth layer is cirro-stratus, white and stretched out from side to side. And the final layer is cirrus, stretched fore and aft, at right angles to the cirrostratus below. So much going on at different levels in the atmosphere!

It’s very clear that things that seem really simple (the air above our heads) can show complex patterns of behaviour. That’s a good lesson to learn for life in general.

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

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