A Mysterious Light Pillar Phenomenon Captured In Canada (Video)

A bizarre light pillar phenomenon was spotted in the night sky of Ontario, Canada. Some said it looked like an alien glow, yet there is an explanation of the occurrence of the said beams of light in the sky.

Timmy Joe Elzinga captured the image through his smartphone camera on Jan. 6, 2017, at about 1:30 a.m. local time. He said that when he first saw these light beams shooting through the sky from his bathroom window, he was sure they were the Northern Lights. He could take photos because the lights were so bright and pronounced and because he is a bit of an amateur photographer. He used the manual settings on his phone to adjust the time the aperture was open to 8 seconds, according to Yahoo.

What Caused Brilliant #PillarsOfLight To Appear Over #Canada? https://t.co/SAFDDNcydP #LaserLights #Lasers #CanadianLightShow @YeshuaMiri

— Author JB Richards (@JeanneRichard11) January 16, 2017

So, what are those visible pillars of light? NASA explained that the pillars of light are ice from high altitudes. It further said that during some cold, wintry nights, flat ice crystals that are located higher up in the atmosphere come fluttering closer to the ground.

These ice crystals are known as "crystal fog." Once the ice crystals reflected the ground lights from nearby cars and other bits of civilization, it resulted to glorious columns of light referred to as "light pillars."

Science Alert reports that light pillars are an optical phenomenon that belongs to the halo family. This is an optical phenomenon that is created by light interacting with ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, Les Cowley, a retired physicist and atmospheric optics expert, said that the pillars are not physically over the lights or anywhere else in space for that matter. He further said that like all halos, they are purely the collected light beams from all the millions of crystals, which just happen to be reflecting light towards human's eyes or camera.