On January 16, NASA's space shuttle Columbia roared [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] into blue morning skies above Kennedy Space Center on STS-107 [
http://spaceflight.…], the first shuttle mission of 2003. But this is not a picture of that launch [
http://spaceflight.…html/03pd0113.html ]! 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 [ http://ww2010.atmos. uiuc.edu/(Gh)/ guides/mtr/opt/ice/s p.rxml ], sunlight reflecting from ice crystals [
http://www.sundog.c…] gently falling through the cold air, seems to shoot above the fiery Sun still low [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] on the horizon. By chance, fog [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] and clouds forming over the relatively warm lake look like billowing smoke from a rocket's exhaust plume [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] and complete the launch illusion. Amateur photographer Lauri Kangas stopped on his way to work to record the eye-catching [
http://www.photon-e…] sun pillar launch.
Explanation
On January 16, NASA's space shuttle Columbia roared [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] into blue morning skies above Kennedy Space Center on STS-107 [
http://spaceflight.…], the first shuttle mission of 2003. But this is not a picture of that launch [
http://spaceflight.…html/03pd0113.html ]! 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 [ http://ww2010.atmos. uiuc.edu/(Gh)/ guides/mtr/opt/ice/s p.rxml ], sunlight reflecting from ice crystals [
http://www.sundog.c…] gently falling through the cold air, seems to shoot above the fiery Sun still low [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] on the horizon. By chance, fog [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] and clouds forming over the relatively warm lake look like billowing smoke from a rocket's exhaust plume [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] and complete the launch illusion. Amateur photographer Lauri Kangas stopped on his way to work to record the eye-catching [
http://www.photon-e…] sun pillar launch.
Explanation
