What's behind rare light pillars over China's Arctic Village?

Nature has a way of offering up unexpected moments of beauty. Recently, China's northernmost settlement, Beiji, or Arctic Village situated in Mohe, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, turned into a stage for a dazzling display of multicolored "light pillars."

These pillars in the sky are an optical phenomenon that occurs when light interacts with specific atmospheric conditions. Water vapor freezes into tiny, hexagonal ice crystals that remain suspended in the air. The crystals act like millions of miniature mirrors, reflecting and refracting light from street lamps, neon signs, billboards and car headlights back toward the ground.

As ice crystals exist at many different heights throughout the atmosphere, reflections combine to form elongated columns of light that appear to stretch vertically across the night sky.

Light pillars appear only when the right weather conditions come together: freezing temperatures below 0 degrees Celsius, high humidity and a still air with no wind. These requirements are so exacting that the phenomenon is rarely seen, which makes it all the more captivating.

Skywatchers have a better chance of catching sight of light pillars in high-latitude regions or at high elevations. In China, light pillars have been observed in the northeastern regions, as well as over Inner Mongolia, northern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the southwestern Qinghai-Xizang Plateau.