The photo was taken by NASA's Terra satellite earlier this month, made it online just a few days ago

Sep 30, 2014 09:46 GMT  ·  By

This past September 27, NASA decided to entertain us ordinary folks for a while and released a positively stunning photo of a fairly peculiar cloud hovering over the Pacific Ocean.

The photo in question is available next to this article. As one can easily notice, the cloud featured in it forms a perfect circle. Pretty cool, right?

According to Live Science, NASA obtained the image earlier this month. Thus, the photo was taken on September 3 by the Agency's Terra satellite.

It is understood that the cloud was heading southwest from the Hawaiian Islands at the time NASA's Terra satellite chanced to cross paths with it and photographed it.

Specialists say that odd clouds like the one featured in this NASA image are known to the scientific community as open-cell clouds. They form when cold air sinks and warm air starts rising all around it.

Contrary to what some might assume, ring-shaped clouds are not few and far between. On the contrary, meteorologists say that they form on a fairly regular basis.

However, it took a while for the scientific community to become aware of their existence. Thus, these clouds were only documented after satellites in charge of keeping tabs of changing weather conditions chances to photograph them.