APOD: A Sun Pillar Over Ontario (2011 Aug 18)

[APOD Robot]

A Sun Pillar Over Ontario

Explanation: What is that on the horizon? No, it's not an alien starship battling distant Earthlings, but rather a sun pillar. When driving across Ontario, Canada in early June, the photographer was surprised to encounter such an "eerie and beautiful" vista, and immediately took pictures. When atmospheric air is cold, ice sometimes forms flat six-sided crystals as it falls from high-level clouds. Air resistance then causes these crystals to lie nearly flat much of the time as they flutter to the ground. If viewed toward a rising or setting Sun, these flat crystals will reflect sunlight and create an unusual column of light -- a sun pillar as seen above. Such columns of light are not uncommon to see, and a retrospective of past APODs that have featured picturesque sun pillars can be found here.

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[Beyond]

The first link-to the alien starship, is a 403. But what a nice picture!! And there's some other nice links as well!!!

[orin stepanek]

Beautiful picture; I saved it for a future background.

[L-P Comiré]

Having worked for 18 years at Buttonville Airport in Markham, Ontario, I have seen hundreeds of sunrises and sunsets and on a good number of winter mornings and evenings I have seen sun dogs and sun beams like this one.
They are very common, you just need to be awake and be paying attention to the sunrise, before the sun comes up. Add in a helicopter or otehr aircraft flying by and it makes a a great picture - copies which I've lost over the years...

[Phil Rauch]

There was no mention of the clouds. They appear to be an example of noctilucent ones, but since there was no mention of them I am wondering if this is correct. Quite a beautiful photograph.

[tECH hIPPY]

There was no mention of the clouds. They appear to be an example of noctilucent ones, but since there was no mention of them I am wondering if this is correct. Quite a beautiful photograph.

The clouds are too low to be noctilucent but they are back lit from above by reflected light in the upper atmosphere.

[saturn2]

The sun pillar is very beautiful and eerie...
The crystal of ice in atmospheric reflect some sunlight.
But, the ice can to difracted other part of sunlight .

[Beyond]

I found todays APOD--A Sun Pillar Over Ontario--in the strangest place. In my in-box in an e-mail from Bob Rankin. I subscribe to his e-mails about computer and internet stuff. Today he listed astromomical sites on the internet and Astronomy Picture of the Day was at the top of the list. When i clicked on the link, it took me right to todays Sun Pillar, that is posted here. He has a lot of subscribers, so there may be more people stopping in to take a look. He even mentioned the extensive archive. I don't think he realized that there is also a growing collection of non-NASA pictures taken by people from all over the world.
I think i'll tell him.

[Astrokeener]

Spread the word, there is a whole Universe out there and APOD has it all!

[Crowelakegirl]

I *love* this photo. The photographer is very talented and knowing him only a few years now, I can assure you there will be many more to enjoy! Keep up the good work.