Like a ship carving its way through the sea, the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands parted the clouds. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this natural-color image on February 2, 2017. The ripples in the clouds are known as gravity waves.

NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response. Caption by Pola Lem.