Dusty Sunbeams

March 03, 2006

Dustysunbeams

Provided by: John A. Adam
Summary author: John A. Adam

I took this picture one summer's day while walking to work through this delightfully shady arboretum. These sunbeams are really local examples of crepuscular rays: the shadows between them are caused by leaves and branches blocking the sunlight, while the light that does get through is scattered (and therefore made visible) by dust particles. In this case, the dust was blown into the air from a tractor mowing the grass. Unlike the beams of light between shadows produced by clouds, these beams do not appear to converge to a point because the effects of perspective are not significant here.

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