Kennedy Media Gallery at John F. Kennedy Space Center (NASA, Florida, USA), Photo #: KSC-00PP-1416, http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/detail.cfm?mediaid=4720:
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/images/.../00pp1416-m.jpg (medium)
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/images/large/00pp1416.jpg (large)
The NASA caption writer explains that:
"This view of the shock wave condensation collars backlit by the sun occurred during the launch of Atlantis on STS-106 and was captured on an engineering 35mm motion picture film. One frame was digitized to make this still image. Although the primary effect is created by the Orbiter forward fuselage, secondary effects can be seen on the SRB forward skirt, Orbiter vertical stabilizer and wing trailing edges (behind SSME's)."
The creation of the transonic cloud is clearly seen in NASA's launch video of Space Shuttle Atlantis which is found on their STS-106 Video Index, Daily Videos: Flight Day 1 page, http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/video/...6/html/fd1.html .
Related Links
Flying at transonic speeds, 30 June 2005, PhysOrg WebLog
http://weblog.physorg.com/news2269.html
Discovery created a Prandtl-Glauert cloud?, 3 August 2005, PhysOrg Forum
http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?showtopic=2520