Johnston's organ is a collection of sensory cells found in the pedicel of the antennae in the class Insecta. Johnston's organ detects motion in the flagellum. It consists of scolopidia arrayed in a bo
Illustration from the 1855 paper of Christopher Johnston
In physics, the Coriolis force is a pseudo-force that acts on objects in motion within a frame of reference that rotates with respect to an inertial frame. In a reference frame with clockwise rotation
Johnston's organ
…indicate that the antennae vibrate with a frequency matching wingbeat (27 Hz). During complex flight, however, angular changes of the flying moth cause Coriolis forces, which are predicted to manifest as a vibration of the antenna of at about twice wingbeat frequency (~60 Hz). When antennae were manipulated to vibrate…
Image from Cursus seu Mundus Mathematicus (1674) of C.F.M. Dechales, showing how a cannonball should deflect to the right of its target on a rotating Earth, because the rightward motion of the ball is faster than that of the tower.
Image from Cursus seu Mundus Mathematicus (1674) of C.F.M. Dechales, showing how a ball should fall from a tower on a rotating Earth. The ball is released from F. The top of the tower moves faster than its base, so while the ball falls, the base of the tower moves to I, but the ball, which has the eastward speed of the tower's top, outruns the tower's base and lands further to the east at L.
Due to the Coriolis force, low-pressure systems in the Northern Hemisphere, like Typhoon Nanmadol (left), rotate counterclockwise, and in the Southern Hemisphere, low-pressure systems like Cyclone Darian (right) rotate clockwise.
Cloud formations in a famous image of Earth from Apollo 17, makes similar circulation directly visible