Locals Baffled as Striking ‘Light Pillars’ Started Glowing in the Night Sky of China’s Arctic Village
At twilight, the town of Mohe in China is bathed aglow in a jamboree of fiery sunset palette, glittering auroras, and dancing lights. While the skies here are aglow every evening, recently residents spotted a dazzling display of “light pillars” that materialized in the city, dubbed “Arctic Village,” according to a report by CGTN. Nicknamed the “city of extreme cold,” Mohe is tucked along the northern slopes of the Great Khingan Mountains. As Global Times describes, the city is so cold, its mercury can dip below fifty degrees Celsius, often provoking high humidity and a bitter, still air that cannot be called a breeze.
But these light pillars spotted recently surpassed a typical day of beauty in this Chinese village. Also called “ice pillars,” the light pillars were observed in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, also called “Beiji.” The pillars resemble gleaming, steep fountains of neon light shooting towards the sky or dozens of sparkling swords etched into the ground that are now reaching the skies, casting glowing halos.
All this description makes it sound like the pillars are the creation of a science fiction or fantasy writer. But as the news outlet reports, the pillars are just an “optical phenomenon” notoriously sculpted by dying water vapor. The magic unfolds when light comes in contact with a specialized set of atmospheric conditions. Vapor fanning upwards freezes into tiny, hexagonal ice crystals that remain suspended in the air. As they dangle mid-air, the crystals act like millions of mini mirrors, each reflecting and refracting light from street lamps, neon signs, billboards, and car headlights back to the ground.
Since these crystals hang out in little, disorderly clusters, the pillars formed due to them are usually varying in shapes, heights, and sizes. These elongated columns of light burst from the ground to stretch vertically across the night sky, aiming right for the stars. According to WDRB, the temperature needs to be at least 20 to 30 degrees below zero for these pillars to materialize. If the conditions are perfect and the pillars appear, they often lap around showers of snowflakes and flurries of what scientists call “diamond dust.”
CGTN reports that visitors and residents can catch more sights of these remarkable light pillars in high-latitude regions or at high elevations, most likely in northeastern China, as well as over Inner Mongolia, northern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and the southwestern Qinghai-Xizang Plateau. To look at it from a scientist’s perspective, all these light pillars are but an optical illusion. But what an illusion!
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