Launch of the Sun Pillar
Credit & Copyright:
Lauri A. Kangas
On January 16, NASA's space shuttle
Columbia roared into blue morning
skies above Kennedy Space Center on
STS-107,
the first shuttle mission of 2003.
But this is not a picture of
that launch!
It was taken on the morning of January 16 though, at sunrise, looking
eastward toward Lake Ontario from just outside of Caledon, Ontario,
Canada.
In the picture a sun pillar, sunlight reflecting
from ice crystals
gently falling through the cold air, seems to shoot above the fiery
Sun still low on the horizon.
By chance, fog
and clouds forming over the relatively warm lake look
like billowing smoke from a rocket's
exhaust plume and complete the
launch illusion.
Amateur photographer Lauri Kangas stopped on his way to work to record
the eye-catching
sun pillar launch.