Starship Asterisk*

Jyväskylä in the Sky

Explanation: You might not immediately recognize this street map of a neighborhood in Jyväskylä, Finland, planet Earth. But that's probably because the map was projected into the night sky and captured with an allsky camera on January 16. The temperature recorded on that northern winter night was around minus 20 degrees Celsius. As ice crystals formed in the atmosphere overhead, street lights spilling illumination into the sky above produced visible light pillars, their ethereal appearance due to specular reflections from the fluttering crystals' flat surfaces. Of course, the projected light pillars trace a map of the brightly lit local streets, though reversed right to left in the upward looking camera's view. This light pillar street map was seen to hover for hours in the Jyväskylä night.

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This is actually pretty cool. Here's a side by side of the "light pillar sky roadmap" and the real map (which was flipped right-to-left to match the sky image):

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 5:11 pm This is actually pretty cool. Here's a side by side of the "light pillar sky roadmap" and the real map:


light pillar sky road ap of Jyväskylä finland.jpg

Thanks a lot. I stared at today's APOD for a couple of minutes but saw no resemblance, but this helped

Thank you Johnnydeep. This is great to see the map side by side with the image.