A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1367 entries
sun pillar
A sun pillar is a vertical column of light standing above or below the sun, usually seen near sunrise or sunset. It is made by flat plate-shaped ice crystals drifting horizontally in the air and reflecting sunlight off their faces like a scatter of tiny mirrors, so the pillar is a reflection rather than a refraction, which is why it is the color of the sun rather than a spectrum.
Etymology
The English name is a plain description and the phenomenon has been recorded for centuries as a portent, since a vertical shaft of light above a setting sun is easy to read as a sign. The same effect occurs with the moon and with street lights, in which case it is a light pillar, which is on this site.
Notes
Light pillars over a town on a very cold night are the same physics with a different source, and they can stand above every streetlight at once, which produces one of the stranger sights in a northern winter. The crystals responsible sit at the same slight tilt that produces sundogs, so pillars and sundogs often appear together.