One awestruck observer, Amarkhan Jidar, was able to take pictures of this eerie appearance in the night skies of Sulu a few days back:
Photo by Amarkhan Jidar
The bluish lights looked like celestial beings either being beamed down from or shooting up the sky. Jidar said that at the time he took the photos, the phenomenon had stayed there for a good 20-30 minutes—more than enough time to take a very clear photo, not unlike many other UFO sightings that just had to be vague. In this time of Stranger Things, the light show in Sulu was perfect fodder for fringe opinions.
Except they weren’t quite UFO. Turns out the light pillars are fairly common phenomena and clearly earth-bound.
AO forwarded the Sulu light pillar photos to Dr. Rogel Mari Sese, Filipino astrophysicist and the key figure in the birth of the Philippine Space Agency, to ask for his expert opinion. In a snap he replied with links to explanations of what a light pillar is and examples of occurrences recorded recently.
“Pang ilan ka na nagtanong kaya naka-ready na ang mga links,” Dr. Sese replied.
National Geographic cites a definition by website Atmospheric Optic: “the optical illusion is created when cold winter air allows millions of flat ice crystals to descend lower to the ground. When light from street lamps hits the crystals, it creates the appearance of a thin, tall rod.” It can apparently take on any color that illuminates them, hence the bluish light in the Sulu photo must have come from a similar-hued source.
“As you can see it happens quite a lot,” Dr. Sese said. “The weather condition there [might have been adequate] kaya doon lang nakita. It has to be in a proper angle to be seen, parang rainbow or moonbow.”
But Dr. Sese says it is definitely not something akin to an aurora. “It is extremely rare to have auroras in the equatorial region. For that to happen, there has to be strong solar activity. But currently, we are in the solar minimum of the 11 year cycle. So not much solar activity. The sun is very quiet nowadays.”
PAGASA also explains the light pillars in Sulu as ice crystals in cirrus clouds being hit by moonlight.
So it’s still boring old nature at work, sorry.