Light pillars

To begin with, this is me in the cab of a big Russian truck which is the largest vehicle I've ever been driven in.But I digress.

Back in the States, Halloween is approaching, so maybe that's what I was thinking about when I thought I saw searchlights above Noyabrsk. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good pic. But I saw them the next night when I went on a job. Turns out they weren't searchlights trying to attract people to corn mazes or haunted houses. They were much more interesting.

I tried to take a picture while we were driving using some of my manual camera settings:

But then we stopped and I got a few cool shots:

I know these photos oversaturate light source but they show the effect of light pillars quite well. It was a cold night with a very fine snow in the air. The pillars come from the light reflected off the snow crystals.

The light sources are gas flares, which are flames coming from smokestacks near the wellsite and fueled by natural gas that comes as an oil well byproduct and deemed too expensive to try to refine. Russia has promised to stop the practice at some point, but it still continues.

But they do make it look like the aliens have landed somewhere in the steppes of Siberia.


But still no Northern Lights, which is the best thing I am hoping to see this winter.

Finally, here is a dimly light picture from the well site. I thought it looked cool.