Solar Pillar
This is not a big deal when it comes to the equipment I used, but it's a neat effect you don't see very often (never before, in my case).
I was driving home just at sunset when I saw a solar pillar. I raced home and took a picture with a simple digital camera--the intensity of the pillar had diminished by half by the time I took this pic. The contrail makes an interesting but ultimately distracting hockey stick effect.
The internet tells me that solar pillars are formed when the sun's rays bounce off of water vapor in the air. Sunbeams that would normally pass over my head are reflected downward into my eye. This is the same process of looking at the moon over a large body of water in which a moonlit pathway points directly toward you across the water.
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