Light Pillars- False Aurora

These are Light Pillars caused by drifting or falling hexagonal-shaped ice crystals. Each one acts like a tiny mirror reflecting the light above (or below) When billions of them allign at all altitudes, pillars will form from anything nearby that is bright enough to reflect, in this case city lights. The blues and oranges are the different style city lights such as mercury or sodium sodium vapor. Dozens of pillars together tend to look like auroras, giving them a nickname of 'false aurora.' In fact, these were initially spotted by my wife on her way home from work, She ran inside the house shouting 'Honey come look! Northern Lights! Everywhere!'

In the image, i am south of the City of Kalamazoo, MI, but well within city limits, just a couple minutes from downtown. I'm facing North toward downtown where the highest concentration of light pillars were forming. This was one of about 10 in a sequence of pictures. The pillars slowly move from photo to photo, all while brightening and dimming, disappearing and reappearing. Almost identical to classic auroral 'curtains'


This image was featured in a spaceweather.com article, since then i've found it all over the internet as an excellent example of 'false aurora' or city light pillars.
Read about the picture/phenomenon here:
[link]