Mystery "alien" light pillars, page

Here is yet another new variation of a well known phenomena that has experts stumped! It's obviously of terrestrial origin and caused by the lights on the buildings in the photograph, but people seeing it from a distance might well class it as a UFO. I think it just goes to show how little we know about the sky, and how easy it can be to be fooled by things seen in the sky.

"The air was very cold and filled with small ice crystals on Dec. 28th when we saw these strange pillars of light," reports Aigar Truhin of Sigulda, Latvia. "My son exclaimed, The aliens are coming!" It certainly looked that way." Truhin snapped this picture using his Nikon D90:

Source: spaceweather.com

Many people have seen light pillars. They appear during winter when city lights shine upward into the icy air. Reflections from plate-shaped crystals spread the light into a vertical column: examples.

Truhin's pillars, however, are not the ordinary kind. Even two leading experts in atmospheric optics can't quite figure them out: "These pillars are mysterious," say Les Cowley and Marko Riikonen.

[edit on 1-1-2009 by C.H.U.D.]

Nope you definently got the right forum

I havent had the oppurtunity to ever see anything like this (stupid tropical weather) before, but its certainly a well known phenomena in the atmospheric optics world but rarely like that. Its almost like a halo at ground level instead of embedded in the cirrus cloud

Great stuff

www.atoptics.co.uk...

reply to post by OzWeatherman

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Thanks Oz,

Yeah, perhaps I should have said "Here is yet another new variation of a well known phenomena that has experts stumped!"

I also have yet to see the light pillar phenomenon with my own eyes. Perhaps one day... I'm also a bit too near the equator for such displays it seems.

I don't know if you have it on TV over there, but 'Ice Road Truckers' looks like it was filmed in just the right place to see them. In one episode the camera man panned right by a sun-dog as if it were something they see every day! I almost yelled at him to pan back

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