My  friend Sandi sent me this.  I thought you might like it,  too.
 
 
GREAT picture!!
> Please read all this first before  opening up the picture.  This is pretty
> cool!  Be sure to read  the explanation below before looking at the
attached
> picture.   You can't really appreciate the picture without knowing what it
is
>  exactly.  This isn't a joke, so don't expect a punchline or  strange/funny
> picture.
> Through the viewfinder of his camera,  Ensign John Gay could see the
fighter
> plane drop from the sky heading  toward the port side of the aircraft
carrier
> Constellation.  At  1,000 feet, the pilot drops the F/A-18C Hornet to
increase
> his speed  to 750 mph, vapor flickering off the curved surfaces of the
plane.
> In  the precise moment a cloud in the shape of a farm-fresh egg  forms
around
> the Hornet 200 yards from the carrier,its engines  rippling the Pacific
Ocean
> just 75 feet below, Gay hears an explosion  and snaps his camera shutter
once.
>  "I clicked the same time I  heard the boom, and I knew I had it", Gay
said.
> What he had was a  technically meticulous depiction of the sound barrier
being
> broken  July7,1999, somewhere on the Pacific between Hawaii and Japan.
> Sports  Illustrated, Brills Content, and Life ran the photo.  The photo
>  recently took first prize in the science and technology division in  the
World
> Press Photo 2000 contest, which drew more than 42,000  entries worldwide.
> "All of a sudden, in the last few days,I've been  getting calls from
> everywhere about it again.  It's kind of neat, "  he said, in a telephone
> interview from his station in Virginia Beach,  VA.
> A naval veteran of 12 years, Gay, 38, manages a crew of eight  assigned to
> take intelligence photographs from the high-tech belly of an  F-14Tomcat,a
> Joint Task Force Exercise as the Constellation made its way  to Japan.
> Gay selected his Nikon 90 S, one of the five 35 mm cameras he  owns.  He
set
> his
> 80-300 mm zoom lens on 300 mm, set his  shutter speed at 1/1000 of a second
> with an aperture setting of  F5.6.  "I put it on full manual, focus and
> exposure," Gay  said.  "I tell young photographers who are into automatic
>  everything, you aren't going to get that shot on auto.  The plane is  too
> fast.  The camera can't keep up."
> At sea level a plane  must exceed 741 mph to break the sound barrier, or
the
> speed at which  sound travels.  The change in pressure as the plane outruns
> all of  the pressure and sound waves in front of it is heard on the ground
as
>  an explosion or sonic boom.  The pressure change condenses the water  in
the
> air as the jet passes these waves.  Altitude, wind  speed,humidity, the
shape
> and trajectory of the plane - all of these  affect the breaking of this
> barrier.  The slightest drag or  atmospheric pull on the plane shatters the
> vapor oval like fireworks as  the plane passes through,he said everything
on
> July 7 was  perfect.  "You see this vapor flicker around the plane that
gets
>  bigger and bigger.  You get this loud boom, and it's instantaneous.   The
> vapor cloud is there, and then it's not there.
> It's the  coolest thing you have ever seen."
> Now open the  picture.

 - CLOUD.jpg