Upper Sun Pillar

A Sun pillar rises above of the mountains of the Bigelow Preserve in Eustis, Maine. Over a period of about 4 minutes it brightened as it marched steadily down the ridge line from left to right. The picture was taken at 7:31am on November 2nd, 2023 Just moments before the Sun itself emerged. Sun pillars betray the presence of tiny flat ice crystals in the air with their broad side oriented roughly horizontally. Light from the Sun is reflected from the underside of these crystals back to the observer giving appearance of a vertical shaft of light. Sun pillars are just one of a wide range of atmospheric ice crystal displays that can be observed when conditions are right. For insight and information on these phenomena it is hard to do better than Robert Greenler’s book Rainbows, Halos and Glories.