Photo Album

Light Pillars

Possibly once during one of our winters here in southern Alberta with the temperature in the -30 Celsius range, and ice crystals suspended in the air, do I get the opportunity to shoot photos where light pillars are being created either naturally or in this case, the lights located throughout the CN Logistics Intermodal yard near Conrich Alberta.

Light pillars occur in freezing temperatures when flat, hexagonal ice crystals form lower in the atmosphere than they usually would.
When this happens, the crystals essentially form a collective giant mirror, that can reflect a light source such as what's happening here.
That sounds a little counterintuitive, because it looks like these pillars are beaming up to the sky. But in reality the opposite is happening, the light travelling upward is being reflected back down to the ground creating the illusion of a pillar.

Light pillars are an optical phenomenon that belongs to the halo family, because it's caused by the interaction of light with ice crystals. Another example are sun dogs that also will appear under similar circumstances, and in fact I have shot photos of sun dogs beginning just after sunrise and in to the mid-day light created under similar conditions.

Expand the photo for a closer look.....