A photographer captured this unusual sight in southern Argentina and people are amazed by its glowing halo-like appearance.
The Sun, our solar system's gigantic star, floods Earth with radiant light. As this light interacts with our atmosphere, it illuminates our world—but sometimes it also creates optical illusions. When sunlight hits elements like raindrops or misty clouds, it can cause us to see things that aren’t there or appear distorted. In mid-2023, Argentine photographer Gaby Chavez (@gabychavez86) captured one such illusion and described it as “a portal to another dimension” on Instagram.
The footage shows a glowing oval-shaped halo of light floating above a snowy slope. It had a purplish grey middle, a ring of white light, and an amber-orange glow at the rim. A flurry of snowflakes in the background only made the unusual circle appear more otherworldly. Gaby recorded this bizarre footage at the Ski Resort Cerro Catedral in Patagonia, in southern Argentina, per Newsweek. "A portal to another dimension?" Gaby asked her followers in a caption, and added, "Nature [is] always surprising, snow crystals flying, and the Sun's rays filtering through the cloud," as translated according to Newsweek.
More than 239,000 people viewed the footage and loved it, as seen in the comment section. “If I was there, I wouldn't take a picture, I would jump through it, just to try my luck,” commented @aleksandar125. @edoardo_segato_figueroa said the glowing circle of light was “transurfing fairies.”
In the Instagram post, Gaby also added the hashtag #subsun in the caption. As it turns out, the unusual halo of light wasn’t some otherworldly portal, but a scientific phenomenon called “subsun.” According to the World Meteorological Organization’s International Cloud Atlas, “Subsun,” also called “Undersun,” is an optical phenomenon produced by the reflection of sunlight on plate-shaped ice crystals in clouds. It appears vertically below the Sun as a brilliant white spot, similar to the image of the Sun on a calm water surface.
The ice crystals almost act as a mirror for the sunlight, Gaby explained in her Instagram post. The ice crystals that create this phenomenon have the form of hexagonal plates. Normally, the orientation the ice crystals in the atmosphere determines the kind of optical phenomenon that is created. These optical phenomena usually occur in cold places where there are very clear conditions. In these conditions, the ice crystals allow the sunlight to pass through, Gaby said. "In this case, we can see a multitude of bright points surrounding the ball of light, and they coincide with crystals moving in the air, shining stealthily like mirrors and whose density decreases rapidly with distance from the center of the phenomenon," Gaby was quoted by Newsweek.
On X too, Gaby’s footage became viral. In November 2023, a woman named Carol Vorderman reposted Gaby’s footage and captioned it, “This is a beautiful thing I haven't seen before...a ‘Subsun’.” @harrypremier201 said, “It’s a time portal!” Several people likened this phenomenon to the “Brocken Spectre,” which according to the Met Office, is a large shadow of an observer cast onto a cloud or mist.
The Sun shining behind the observer projects a shadow through the mist on a hilltop, while the magnification of the shadow is an optical illusion that makes the shadow on nearby clouds seem at the same distance as faraway landmarks seen through the cloud. The shadow can also pass through water droplets, and appear as if the shadow is moving. This causes a disorientating effect or a giant shadow looming under the Sun.
Watch Gaby's stunning footage below:
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