On a drive back into Chicago tonight, I saw – and tried to photograph – a very strange visual phenomenon near the outskirts of town. I’ll try and figure it out when I have more time. I thought it might be my glasses or car window at first, but after taking off the glasses and lowering the window it still looked just as weird.
The crescent moon was hanging very low in the sky, and near it along the horizon, at ground level, was some kind of baleful yellow glow. It reminded me of a massive halogen lamp or something similar…a cross between a fallen star and a streetlamp.
Both light sources, probably due to the moisture in the air, were displaying both vertical and horizontal shafts of light. The ground-level source looked for all the world like a huge jet engine, pluming exhaust straight up, and the moon’s glow gave it the look of some kind of religious icon. I couldn’t get a photo to turn out, so I drew it quickly when I got in the house. Here it is.
Strange Atmospheres
The worst part is, this sketch doesn’t do the scale of the image justice. The light plume from the ground-level light had to be a couple thousand feet of light scatter, brighter and more intense than a searchlight. With the atmospheric conditions that were present, this view or something similar must’ve been visible for miles. I got a good look at it for maybe 5 minutes at highway speeds, and while the moon (of course) remained relatively steady the ground light moved via parallax from one side of the view to the other as I drove.