Nature sometimes offers beautiful gifts, and lucky are those who find themselves in the front row to be able to admire the spectacle. Timothy Joseph Elzinga is a resident of Ontario, a province of Canada, and he won't soon forget what he witnessed on January 6, 2017. Woken up at 1:30 a.m. by his 2-year-old son years, it was while trying to calm him down that he saw an extremely rare phenomenon through the window:columns of light. “I had to take a closer look, I put on some jeans and ran outside to take pictures “, he explains to the site CBC News . The young father, who initially believed that it was the northern lights, later learned what these famous luminous columns or solar pillars were.
According to National Geographic , the phenomenon is typical of the polar regions and only appears when the temperatures are freezing. The columns result from the interaction between light (natural or artificial) and ice crystals:when temperatures drop, these crystals position themselves horizontally and fall through the air. It is then that they act as "vessels" or receptacles for the light, and propel it upwards. In the specific case of the photos taken by Timothy Joseph Elzinga, the air was so cold that ice crystals formed everywhere, reflecting the lights of the streets and businesses of the city. Simply sublime!
The photographer in question remains quite upset:“it was radiant, I had never seen such a thing before. It almost seemed supernatural “, he concludes. If you want to have the chance to observe the light columns, they occur in other regions of the globe such as Sweden, Alaska, New Hampshire and Michigan, USA. We leave you with other photos, to have stars in your eyes...
