A couple of months ago I was driving down Route 18 in western Oregon from McMinnville to Sheridan just around local sunrise. Glancing off to my left at the Cascades I noticed several very bright (specular) points of light on a couple of the mountains. Of course, my camera was at home. But I noticed that the lights seemed to be on the south-facing sides of the mountains (we're tallking February, so the sun was pretty far south. My best guess was grazing reflection off some snowfields.

I was also remembering grinding mirrors as a teenager. After the fine grinding is done and you start to polish the mirror, you begin to produce flat areas on the highest points of the glass. If you lift the mirror and look at the reflection of a light source from a grazing angle, the flat areas will produce an actual image. As polishing progresses, the angle becomes less and less as more flat areas are produced. So, if there are surfaces out in the distance, could grazing-angle light on a distant surface produce the effects?

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