Sometimes when the sun shines through patchy cloud, the rays are visible. However, they are visibly spreading out as if the sun was only in the upper atmosphere rather than a few million miles away. The rays should be more or less parallel because of the distance to the source but they visibly diverge or splay out. I can’t work out why/how. I’m not sure refraction is the answer nor that the light is bouncing off an illuminated cloud that is higher than the others. Can you shed any light?
In: 9
It’s the same reason why train tracks appear to converge in the distance even though they are parallel.
[Here’s a link that goes a bit more in depth.](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/154951/why-do-sunbeams-diverge-even-though-the-sun-is-much-more-than-a-few-kilometers-a)
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