What is the optical illusion(?) where the sun’s rays appear to hit the ground at different angles through partial clouds?
The artist side of me knows that when drawing, you have to take into consideration the light source and draw shadows accordingly. So, if I were to draw a scene with the sun, the light rays would radiate outwards from that 1cm circle in the sky.
The logical side of me knows that the sun’s rays that are hitting the earth are parallel. So if I drove to the places where the sun was shining through the clouds, only a couple of km apart, the shadows would not be at different angles.
I just can’t reconcile the two.
In: 1
Various conditions like heat changes and humidity can cause light to bend. This is why you get that hazy mirage in the air above blacktop in direct sunlight. So a cloud can bend light that little bit to give the “God Rays” effect.
It’s just perspective making parallel lines appear to be at an angle. Photographs looking along railway tracks show the same kind of geometrical effect, where parallel rails appear to converge as they extend into the distance. Beams of light from the sun are near enough to parallel that we can’t see the difference but perspective makes them seem to converge into the distance.
They are called crepuscular rays… and the following link has the details on how they look from overhead (parallel):
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/crepuscular-rays-are-parallel
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