This “UFO cloud” always appears in the same place

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The American space agency NASA recently published on its website a photo of a highly unusual cloud that appears repeatedly in the same spot over New Zealand’s South Island and is sometimes misinterpreted as a UFO. What’s behind the phenomenon?

The cloud that the Landsat 8 satellite recorded on September 7 from an altitude of about 700 kilometers is a so-called lenticular cloud. The special thing about the cloud that keeps appearing between the villages of Middlemarch and Hyde in the Otago region of the South Island: it almost always has the same shape.

Appears in the same place every time
The cloud, called ‘Taieri Pet’ by locals, appears there again and again and hangs seemingly motionless above the area. This has to do with the special topography there. It always looks very similar and appears in pretty much the same place every time. The lenticular cloud in the image (see above) is about 7 miles (11.5 kilometers) long.

The lenticular clouds form when the prevailing wind encounters a topographical barrier, such as a mountain range. The wind, forced to flow over the mountains, creates a kind of wave in the atmosphere. At the top of the wave, the air cools and the water vapor it contains condenses into a cloud.

Satellite has been orbiting the earth for over eleven years
‘Landsat 8’ (pictured above) was sent into space on February 11, 2013 aboard an ‘Atlas’ rocket from California to monitor Earth. The satellite orbits the Earth at an altitude of 700 kilometers and provides data on natural disasters and the condition of forests, among other things.

Source: Krone

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