Woman sees glowing map of her neighbourhood in the night sky

[From Twitter]

We’re all used to seeing stars in the night sky, so you can imagine the surprise of one Finnish woman when she looked up and, instead of stars, saw a glowing map of her neighbourhood streets.

It was the night of January 12 when Mia Heikkilä of Eura, Finland noticed what looked like columns of light shining an accurate map of the streets surrounding her home into the atmosphere above.

Though the effect was otherworldly, what Heikkilä saw is actually a recognized weather phenomenon known as light pillars, reports Global News.

These pillars form when hexagonal, plate-shaped ice crystals are close to the ground. These crystals reflect light sources below — in this case, street lights. While it appears that the pillar is shooting up from the ground, in fact, the light is being reflected back towards the ground by the crystals.

Light pillars are fairly common in wintery climates, but what is unusual about Heikkilä’s sighting is that she was right in the middle of a group of pillars, so instead of forming distant streaks, they appeared like points of light in the sky above, mapping out her neighbourhood’s streetlights.

Heikkilä even shared a map of where she lives to compare to the light pillars.

The parallels are truly remarkable.