Cumulonimbus Clouds (Cb)

The series of images displays the Cumulonimbus system "Hector" from the ground. Thirty-four pictures of a flight passing Hector are presented in chapter Cb Hector I. This chapter also contains short explanations about the circumstances of its generation.
The images were all taken from the airport in Darwin (Northern Territories, Australia). According to the data "Hector" indeed forms on a daily basis. CbHector60.jpg to CbHector64.jpg show the totally developed anvil of the Cumulonimbus cloud.

The first two series of images show how the Russian high-altitude research aircraft M 55 "Geophysica" was prepared for the investigations of Hector. It was equipped and used for in-situ measurements up to a cruising altitude of 20 km during the SCOUT-O3 campaign in Australia. The first images show the installation of the instruments into the aircraft.

The aircraft is a single-seat, twin-engined Turbofan machine that was built for the operation in the stratosphere. The whole scientific instrumentation has to work completely automatically. Many of the images are noisy, because the sensor chip of the SLR camera was exposed to ambient temperatures of around 40 deg C. The electronic noise level significantly increases at these high temperature levels.

S. Borrmann, Darwin Airport, Northern Territories, Australia

SCOUT1-4.jpg: 28 November 2005, 9:15 a.m. local time

SCOUT5.jpg: 28 November 2005,
0:32 p.m.

SCOUT6.jpg: 25 November 2005,
0:30 p.m.

SCOUT7.jpg: 25 November 2005,
5:44 p.m.

CbHector35.jpg: 26 November 2005, 4:01 p.m.

CbHector36.jpg: 28 November 2005, 3:26 p.m.

CbHector37.jpg: 29 November 2005, 7:16 p.m.

CbHector38-44.jpg: 29 November 2005, 3:02 p.m.

CbHector45-59.jpg: 30 November 2005, 12:51 p.m. to 1:35 p.m.

CbHector60-63.jpg: 30 November 2005, 5:20 to 5:27 p.m.

Cb_Hector64-66.jpg: 30 November 2005, 6:52 to 7:07 p.m.