A Different Kind of Beam

[beamjockey]

At sunrise on 23 January, a rare phenomenon was seen here. Fermilab Today has a small gallery of solar-pillar photos snapped by Fermilab people.

(This one is by Pat Poll.)

Comments

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Wow!

Thanks. I'm going to go link to you and the photos from my LJ. So beautiful. This is the first I've heard of solar pillars.

[stephanieb.livejournal.com]

How lovely!

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Cool. I saw a wide-ranging light pillar effect a few years ago while cycling in to work at about 5AM when it was stupid cold out, IIRC about -10*F. Unfortunately I wasn't carrying a camera regularly in those days (that event was one of the reasons I started) but every light source within miles of me, mostly rural mercury-vapor outdoor lights, were casting a laser-like beam into the sky, even though I couldn't see the light source.

There was no wind whatsoever, and there were small ice crystals slowly condensing and falling straight down out of the sky, and they were tumbling straight down, reflecting light only up and down but in the same radial direction it was already heading.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Found my post on that event from January of 2005:
http://johnridley.livejournal.com/6766.html
I guess I was driving at the time. It's been a long time, it wasn't my first thought that I'd have been in the car, nor that I would have noticed something that cool from inside a car

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

I have a series of photos of a sunset taken while driving home from the local F/SF club's holiday dinner. None this nice, though.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

You guys were testing the Death Star ray, weren't you?

Damned nice picture Bill.

[lonotter.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, pretty. By the time I was on my way to work that day it wasn't s impressivve.

[daddy-guido.livejournal.com]

for the less astronomically educated of us...

what causes this beautiful effect?

Why is it rare?

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

If it's the same as the light pillars I saw, it's caused by ice crystals in the air (it seems like every cool effect is caused by ice crystals, doesn't it?) In the particular cast that I saw, it's caused by crystals that form in extremely still, cold air. The crystals form elongated hexagons, and with no wind they tend to tumble straight down, oriented horizontally. So they tend to reflect any light source along an arc radial to its source (continuing along its incident direction.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

It's not all that rare; you can see all sorts of interesting ice halo and pillar effects once in a while if you keep an eye out for them.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow! I like Pat Poll's picture. With the little bit of cirrus it makes a decent Roman cross. That would work as a church program or newsletter cover. But everybody would think it was photoshopped.

[unkbar.livejournal.com]

Wow! I like Pat Poll's picture. With the little bit of cirrus it makes a decent Roman cross. That would work as a church program or newsletter cover. But everybody would think it was photoshopped.

Those photos were gorgeous

[techgrrl.livejournal.com]

thnx