Anticrepuscular Rays

Images by Jeannie Bushman taken south of Taos, New Mexico. The sun was low in the west. The bright rays and cloud shadows crossed the opposite eastern sky and converged towards a point below the horizon. ©Jeannie Bushman, shown with permission

Atmospheric
Optics

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parallel shadows crossing the sky
        
The shadows and rays plunge down toward the ant-solar point, the anti-sun. They are called 'anti-crepuscular' as though opposing the 'crepusculum' - twilight.   'Anti-solar' is perhaps more accurate.

The long shadows are parallel and only appear by perspective to converge towards the point directly opposite the sun.   Roads and railway tracks similarly appear to converge in the distance.

The shadows darken as they near the antisolar point because the eye looks increasingly along the long corridors of shadowed air rather than across them.