An alien invasion coming up? Not really. It's just a picture of lenticular clouds captured by a Russian photographer.
Denis Budkov, 33, managed to capture these eerily beautiful clouds over the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. Lenticular clouds, often mistaken for UFO's are usually formed at higher altitudes, when strong winds are blocked by huge geographical masses, like mountains and hills.
Also known as 'altocumulus lenticularis,' these lens-shaped cloud formations are formed when moist air condenses at higher regions near the mountains. When the temperature drops, and the moist droplets are forcibly pushed upwards to a steep slope, the lenticular clouds start to form.
Usually, mountains act as a natural barrier to these winds, causing the clouds to condense, and remain at the cooler side of the mountains, which is why, often, a mountain range tends to have a moist climate on one side, and an arid climate on the other.
"These clouds are very special as they do not move, they stay in one place and it's only their shape that changes," Budkov explained.
"There needs to be at least two factors for these clouds to appear, a very strong wind and a very high object, so Klyuchevskaya Sopka is a perfect place to find lenticular clouds."
"Kamchatka is a very special and beautiful land. With every new day I seem to discover more areas of natural beauty that I didn't even know existed," Budkov added.
"I was born and raised in Kamchatka, the so called 'land of fire breathing mountains' and there is nowhere else like it on Earth. You can walk to the top of a volcano, find the Pacific Ocean by following the mountain rivers and see the first sunrise over all of Russia."
And it's not just the shape of the lenticular clouds that's so eerily appealing; a phenomenon known as irisation sometimes takes place along the edge of these lenticular clouds, which gives these clouds a reddish glow. Sorry to disappoint alien and UFO enthusiasts, but nobody's invading the Earth at the moment. So, let's just move on.
