My new favorite lunar eclipse image

Yesterday I posted a few pictures from Monday night’s lunar eclipse — including a really cool one of the Moon and the Space Shuttle Orbiter Discovery — but of the many hundreds I saw, I think I may have a new favorite:

Sigh. How lovely! Click to enaurorenate.
It was taken by Francis Anderson, who has posted quite a few others, too. The location was Tuktoyaktuk, in the Canadian Northwest Territories. This is a small town located at the bone-chilling latitude of 69° north, inside the Arctic Circle. That explains the visibility of the gorgeous aurora borealis, the glow from solar subatomic particles as they slam into our atmosphere. Guided by the Earth’s magnetic field to the geomagnetic poles near the north and south geographic poles, these particles shear electrons off the molecules and atoms of air, causing it to glow.
But what are those columns of light reaching up from the horizon? Those aren’t part of the aurorae; those are a variant of an atmospheric phenomenon called Sun pillars. Ice crystals in the air act like mirrors, reflecting light. The geometrical shape of the crystals determines how the light is bent; in this case the glow from lights ...