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
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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