‘Incredible’ glow observed in California’s Tahoe Basin

“I’m sitting at my desk and my desk faces the post office in Olympic Valley and to the right of me on the mountain the sun was coming up and bursting a beam of light,” he told SFGATE over the phone. “This beam of light went straight up and formed into a fountain, like a funnel.”

Kennedy said the glow was shaped like a chalice and he’s calling what he observed a “cosmic chalice.” Others who saw his photos of the glow said it looked like a martini glass. 

“It was incredible,” he said. “It lasted a few minutes and then it was gone.”

National Weather Service meteorologist Brian Brong reviewed Kennedy’s video and photos and told SFGATE that it shows the top of a halo of light that can occur around or near the sun or moon when light is refracted by ice crystals or moisture suspended in cirrus clouds, those wispy clouds that former in higher levels of the atmosphere at around 25,000 to 30,000 feet. The scientific term for the light that can appear at the top of the halo is an upper tangent arc, Brong said. 

“Halos are fairly common,” Brong said. “This would have been the halo above the sun. It’s essentially the sunlight going through either ice crystals and clouds or there could have been some moisture coming in. It could have been some moisture coming off the lake that helped enhance it.”

Kennedy said he observed ice crystals. “You could see the snowflakes, the crystals swirling around like a living organism,” he said. 

Kennedy is a writer and photographer, traveling the world and sharing his images and stories on his website Blue Wolf Gallery.

“I’m in search of things that make my skin tingle and my pulse race when I go out,” he said. “What’s fascinating about this story, this cosmic chalice, it was captured at my home. I’ve traveled from Cat Island in the Bahamas to Big Sur to Japan — and I see the most amazing thing barefoot in my bathrobe outside my house.”