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Polar night is a phenomenon that occurs in the northernmost and southernmost regions of Earth when the Sun remains below the horizon for more than 24 hours. This only occurs inside the polar circles. [1] The opposite phenomenon, polar day or midnight sun, occurs when the Sun remains above the horizon for more than 24 hours.
Midnight sun at the North Cape on the island of Magerøya in Norway. Midnight sun, also known as polar day, is a natural phenomenon that occurs in the summer months in places north of the Arctic Circle or south of the Antarctic Circle, when the Sun remains visible at the local midnight.
A light pillar or ice pillar is an atmospheric optical phenomenon in which a vertical beam of light appears to extend above and/or below a light source. The effect is created by the reflection of light from tiny ice crystals that are suspended in the atmosphere or that compose high-altitude clouds (e.g. cirrostratus or cirrus clouds). [1]
Visualization of the ice and snow covering Earth's northern and southern polar regions Northern Hemisphere permafrost (permanently frozen ground) in purple. The polar regions, also called the frigid zones or polar zones, of Earth are Earth's polar ice caps, the regions of the planet that surround its geographical poles (the North and South Poles), lying within the polar circles.
Looming is most commonly seen in the polar regions. Looming was sometimes responsible for the errors made by polar explorers; for example, Charles Wilkes charted the coast of Antarctica, where later only water was found. The larger the size of the sphere (the planet where an observer is located) the less curved the horizon is.
Instead, atmospheric refraction and the Sun's light reaching the planet as an extended object rather than a point source means that just within each circle the Earth's surface does not experience any proper polar night, 24 hours where the sun does not rise. By these same two factors, just outward of each circle still experiences a polar day (a ...
The geography of Antarctica is dominated by its south polar location and, thus, by ice. The Antarctic continent , located in the Earth 's southern hemisphere , is centered asymmetrically around the South Pole and largely south of the Antarctic Circle .
This results in a red shift of the distant light sources that is compensated by the blue hue of the scattered light in the line of sight. In other words, the red light scatters also; if it does so at a point a great distance from the observer it has a much higher chance of reaching the observer than blue light.