Here is a twitter thread I am very certain you will enjoy:
You must certainly click through and read the whole thing. Although some of the photos are more dramatic than this one I’ve linked here, I have to say, this somewhat more subtle phenomenon strikes me as especially beautiful.
What would this be in an SFF world? Aliens, obviously; that’s one possibility. But in fantasy? I’m considering creating a fantasy phenomenon that would look like this because it’s just so amazingly cool to look at.
The Pillars of the Sky!
Mary beat me to it. Also “they don’t exist” isn’t quite right. But it surely is not an optical phenomenon I’d seen before. I *have* seen Floating Islands though, while driving across the Bonneville salt flats on I-80.
I’d seen pictures of sun pillars on apod.nasa.gov, but never such a lot, in lots of colours.
And never in real life. It looks quite magical!
They exist just like rainbows exist.
Mary, I thought exactly the same thing. Narrow view of “existence,” that one.
Putting the image in a fantasy context, I’m not sure why I think they look more like people from Earth ascending/being drawn up rather than celestials descending from the sky, but that’s what I see.
Rachel–
Oh yeah, I thought of the Five Gods world too, where Cazaril sees souls ascending, then slipping across to heaven.