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a lot of people in Las Vegas saw these

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interesting lights in the sky they

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looked like a huge UFO hovering above

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the clouds I was initially confused by

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it but then taivan tuntija posted on

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metabung that it looked like Light

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Pillars seen from below and TC Thomas 51

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on Reddit matched a couple of the light

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shapes to a map of nearby hotels

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and this is actually what it is Light

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Pillars since it creates a small map of

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the city in the sky I'm going to call it

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a light pillar map

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a light pillar is a somewhat rare

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atmospheric phenomena where ice crystals

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form in the air in hexagonal plates are

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lined horizontally seen from a distance

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bright lights behind and below the layer

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reflect off the tiny horizontal Crystals

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at different altitudes creating a pillar

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effect most commonly seen with the sun

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you also see it quite dramatically with

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bright building lights at night

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from below the reflections are generally

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not that visible as they get lost into

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light pollution

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but if you have a light shining straight

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up into the layer then it will reflect

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straight back down of millions of ice

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crystals and you'll see that light

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seemingly reflected off the sky

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what you're really seeing are vertical

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pillars of light probably each a

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thousand feet long but viewed from

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underneath so all you get is a bright

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spot for each light

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in Las Vegas there are lots of Lights

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some of them Point straight up to

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eliminate the sides of the casinos these

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are called up lights or up lighting

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so when we look up in Vegas into the Ice

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Crystal layer it's like looking up into

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a giant mirror that's fifteen thousand

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feet above you but all you can see are

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the up lights

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we flip the mirrored image to Overlay it

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on the map these two curve shapes are

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the up lights around the Wind and The

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Encore you can clearly make out the

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shapes the red lights are the red

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uplights at the ends and center of the

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Hilton Resort worlds we can also see

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other hotels with powerful uplights the

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stratosphere power station and Trump

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International it's a map a light pillar

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map

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the flashing white light is from the

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promotional searchlights of the sapphire

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Club

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remember we only really see up lights

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here so we only see the searchlights

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when they get close to being vertical

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the flashing white dot produced appears

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directly overhead from the sapphire is

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not glinting off anything it's just a

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bright up light that's only occasionally

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vertical

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again it's just these four spotlights

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and since the image in the sky is like

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looking at a map of the city or looking

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down from fifteen thousand feet all we

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see is an occasionally bright dot

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exactly where the sapphire Club is on

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that map

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if you don't know there's a light pillar

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map this gives the illusion of the

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searchlights glinting off something but

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when you think about the scale and

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looking down from 15 000 feet it makes

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sense

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this is something we've seen in the past

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but it's rare to get such a great

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example there's only two other good

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examples I know of one from Shenzhen in

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China where we see a little map of the

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city from above viewed from street level

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the Chinese meteorologist described this

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as warm Night Light Pillars the other

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example is from Europe in Finland where

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again we see a map of the city lights

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this time with visible roads

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meteorologists describe this one as

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perhaps the only example of such a thing

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but I think the Vegas light pillar map

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is pretty close except all we see are

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hotels in a strip club

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why bother to explain something as

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simple as Reflections off clouds

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well it's not really that simple a light

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pillar map is a very rare event so rare

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I had to invent a name for it so it's

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understandable that people not recognize

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it and even they're not immediately

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understand aspects like the glinting

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light so let's not give them a hard time

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light pillar maps are pretty amazing and

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unusual and next time one crops up then

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people will understandably think that