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Weekend


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February 7, 2003

Strange But True!

  • A weekly column of incidental information, off-the-wall observations and other random facts about the world.
    • By BILL SONES and RICH SONES, Ph.D.
    Special to the Journal

    Q. Frequent flyers, to beat plane boredom on your next trip, try to spot heiligenschein ("holy light") or even a glory. Do you know what to watch for?

    A. If you're lucky enough to get a shady side window seat on a sunny day, after liftoff look for the plane's shadow on the ground and watch as it grows smaller with altitude, says Jearl Walker in "Scientific American." Then after shrinking to a dot -- at 10,000 feet? -- it may disappear and be replaced by a bright spot that travels over the ground. Or the shadow may remain and be surrounded by a halo. This is heiligenschein, with sunlight near the shadow point "scattered" back to your eyes.


     
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