Shock waves

Ka-Boom! Our Hornets do it too (via Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs):

What Breaking the Sound Barrier Looks Like

The breaking of the sound barrier is not just an audible phenomenon. As a new picture from the U.S. military shows, Mach 1 can be quite visual.

This widely circulated new photo shows an Air Force F-22 Raptor aircraft participating in an exercise in the Gulf of Alaska June 22, 2009 as it executes a supersonic flyby over the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis.

DoD/Petty Officer 1st Class Ronald Dejarnett, U.S. Navy

June 22: A U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor creates a visible shock wave as it passes over the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis in the Gulf of Alaska.

The visual phenomenon, which sometimes but not always accompanies the breaking of the sound barrier , has also been seen with nuclear blasts and just after space shuttles launches, too.

• Click here for more photos...

Reuters

• Petty Officer 1st Class Ronald Dejarnett, USN
• Reuters
• Library of Congress
• U.S. Navy
• NASA
• Department of Defense

May 23: A ring of water vapor forms as an F/A-18F Super Hornet piloted by Navy fliers Lt. Justin Halligan and Lt. Michael Witt breaks the sound barrier over Jones Beach in Wantagh, N.Y., during the New York Air Show

• Reuters
• Petty Officer 1st Class Ronald Dejarnett, USN
• Reuters
• Library of Congress
• U.S. Navy
• NASA
• Department of Defense

• May 23: A ring of water vapor forms as an F/A-18F Super Hornet piloted by Navy fliers Lt. Justin Halligan and Lt. Michael Witt breaks the sound barrier over Jones Beach in Wantagh, N.Y., during the New York Air Show.
• June 22: A U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor creates a visible shock wave as it passes over the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis in the Gulf of Alaska. The visual effect is created by moisture trapped between crests in a sound wave at or near the moment a jet goes supersonic.
• May 23: The Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet passes through its own water-vapor shockwave cloud over Jones Beach in Wantagh, N.Y., during the New York Air Show. The phenomenon is created when the plane, traveling at low altitudes over water, approaches the speed of sound and the pressure created by the forward sound waves squeezes moisture in the air to form a ball of cloud over the front of the aircraft.
• July 16, 1945: The first nuclear bomb explosion at the Trinity Test Site in New Mexico, photographed from 6 miles away. The supersonic blast front creates its own visible shock wave.
• July 7, 1999: A U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornet deployed aboard USS Constellation breaks the sound barrier in the skies over the Pacific Ocean near Pusan, South Korea.