Late last month, the town of Sigulda, Latvia was treated to an interesting light show. Not the kind with lasers and bad 80's rock, the celestial kind... more specifically, the kind that would freak me out had I seen this in person. This photograph was taken by Aigar Truhins, a designer in Latvia.
Apparently, these beams of light were just street lamps reflecing off of ice crystals suspended in the air (which makes sense if you look at it closely). Though the strang flares at the top still have people stumped.
Scientists at the website spaceweather.com said: 'Truhin’s pillars are not the ordinary kind. Even [leading] experts in atmospheric optics can’t quite figure them out[.]
'These pillars are mysterious. They have unexplained curved tops and even curved arcs coming from their base.
'Arcs in rare displays like these could be from column crystals to give parts of tangent arcs, others could be the enigmatic Moilanan arc or even the recently discovered reflected Parry arc.'
I won't pretend to know exactly what these scientists are saying, only that these pillars are rare. This last quote is my favorite, though:
'My son exclaimed, 'The aliens are coming!'' [Aigar] Truhins was quoted as saying.
I probably would have said the same thing.
