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Originally posted by tribewilder
reply to post by Gab1159
Um.....Blossom Goodchild is kinda not a good name to be throwing around in this place..
By the way, it's due to cold weather that lights seem to "beam" directly up...
Originally posted by alaskan
The same thing happens a lot up here in the mornings when it's cold and dark.
Streetlights, house lights, anything that's sort of bright really, will put a beam straight up like that.
I figure it's either carbon monoxide from vehicles running or water in the air.
Originally posted by greeneyedleo
I was going to say: Im in Alaska and I see that ALL the time. Then I noticed that your screen name is "Alaskan".
So, I will confirm what you said.....is true!
Originally posted by HarryJoy
reply to post by stereologist
(1) Why are there relatively few pillars of light in relation to the number of lights in a given city?? (2) Why does the light reflected off of the ice crystals only appear as a column of light? I may be missing something obvious and if so please point it out. But it seems to me that if the ice crystals are distributed throughout the atmosphere evenly and the light is approaching from all angles it seems it would create a different effect. What would cause us to only see the light as a column? I could see it if the Ice crystals formed columns. Or if the particular light being reflected had a narrow vertical beam. Also as I mentioned earlier has anyone seen photographic examples of this phenomena from say the 60's or 70's? Certainly all of the ingredients for such a manifestation would have been in place at that time.
www.atoptics.co.uk...
The pillars are not physically over the lights or anywhere else in space for that matter ~ like all halos they are purely the collected light beams from all the millions of crystals which just happen to be reflecting light towards your eyes or camera.
Plate shaped ice crystals, normally only present in high clouds, float in the air close to the ground and their horizontal facets reflect light back downwards.
The crystals producing the pillars are roughly halfway between you and the lights.
When ice crystals float in the air around you, pillars (and other halos) can even be seen around streetlights a few metres away.
]Originally posted by HarryJoy
reply to post by stereologist
But it seems to me that if the ice crystals are distributed throughout the atmosphere evenly and the light is approaching from all angles it seems it would create a different effect.