NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) has released a stunning film depicting Earth in ways you’ve probably never seen before.

The video is a time-lapse model of a category-4 typhoon that formed off the coast of China in 2005. Throughout the visualization, the seven-day period is replayed multiple times.

The simulation’s volume-rendered clouds were made with data from NASA’s Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5. (GEOS-5). The 7km GEOS-5 Nature Run (7km-G5NR) simulation was carried out on a supercomputer. This quick visualization used about a terabyte of brickmap data and produced petabytes of output.

The purpose of videos like the one above, according to the SVS website, is to provide the public a clearer picture of our planet and our role within it, as well as to give them an understanding of what NASA is all about: “In order to promote a better understanding of Earth and space science research activities at Goddard Space Flight Center and within the NASA research community, the SVS collaborates closely with scientists in the creation of visualisations, animations, and photographs.”