Sun Pillar

This phenomena is known as a sun pillar, and it’s created by the presence of ice crystals in the atmosphere between the sun and the photographer. This is known as a lower pillar because the beam is coming from below the sun (normal pillars rise up from the sun when it has just dropped below the horizon).

Anita Gould took one of the nicest pictures I’ve seen of one, and it’s from her picture I got the description below:

“Sun pillars appear above or below the Sun near sunrise or sunset. They’re caused by the reflection of sunlight from nearly horizontally-oriented, plate-shaped hexagonal snow crystals (base face reflection), typically found in cirrus clouds. This spectacular pillar [her’s, not mine – Marty] was observed over Cranbury, New Jersey on the morning of May 10, 2005. It spread across at least 20 degrees of sky, was full-blown by 15 minutes before sunrise and was visible a good hour afterwards! The tightness of a pillar is a function of the extent to which the crystals wobble about their vertical axis and is unrelated to crystal size.”

Chris Bohinski got one the same day not too far from us, as well.

For more information on Sun Pillars and other atmospheric phenomena, check out Atoptics.co.uk
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