Light playing on ice crystals

What a beautiful sight!

Les Cowley from atoptics said that this kind of visual spectacle can be sometime seen only once in a lifetime.



This is a combination of a subsun and of a sun pillar:

Imaged by Rocky Seelbach from chair six at Schweitzer Mountain Resort. The camera points downwards. The speckled glow, seemingly hanging in space, is a subsun. It is the same distance below the horizon as the sun is above. Millions of tiny hexagonal plate shaped ice crystals mirror the sunlight. We see individual glints. Crystals drifting with their large faces horizontal form the subsun. Larger crystals wobble more and they give a vertically extended reflection – a sun pillar.

I never had the chance to see this with my own eyes, but I guess that it was indeed a wonderful spectacle.

images of subsun effects are awesome but this one surely would be the most beautiful of them !

thanks for posting such an amazing link.

a reply to: elevenaugust

It's obviously CGI. Kidding!
Thanks for posting this beautiful image.

a reply to: elevenaugust


Gorgeous.

a reply to: elevenaugust

Doesn't even look real! It's so picturesque.