Woah! How the frick does that work?
The morning of my wedding day, I saw my father’s shadow on the wall of my bedroom. :eek:
Okay, I had been thinking about him during the previous days. Wishing he had lived to see me get married. But, there was nothing in the room that was different from any other day. And I never saw it again.
I was nearly lost once in the Nevada (mean to say, I was in the middle of nowhere, man!) desert and stumbled across a rattlesnake. I beat it from that spot, but a short time later after a minor get-off (was riding my motorcycle), I steped on a stick, causing one end to lift off the ground.
I can’t tell you how much sagebrush root looks like a rattlesnake! Scratch one pair of boxer shorts.
I don’t see that it’s that odd. As long as the mountain is roughly pyramidal, as most mountains are, the perspective of the shadow will ensure that it appears triangular as it recedes to the horizon, with a low sun angle.
A couple of things in the mountains that have freaked me out:
Brocken Spectres. I’d read about these, and seen pics, and thought “Wow, cool!” but even though I knew what was going on, I was rather unnerved when I saw one high on the Cuillin Ridge of Skye in Scotland earlier this year. This giant being looms out of the mist, with a glowing halo, and tracks your every move. Help! Here’s another cool pic.
Second, a few years ago I was skiing in very strong winds and near white-out conditions. As I skied across a fairly flat area to get to a lift, the wind was blowing strongly in the same direction as I was travelling , and blowing the loose snow past me. Looking down at my skis, the ground appeared to be moving past me forwards (really, of course, it was just the loose snow) and even though I knew I was moving forwards, I could swear I was going backwards. I was totally disoriented and fell flat on my arse. Even as I lay on the snow, I felt like I was being dragged backwards up the slope :eek:
OK, here is a better explanation of the triangular mountain shadow effect, from the same site that you linked to, RickJay.
http://www.sundog.clara.co.uk/atoptics/mtshform.htm
Basically, I was wrong to say that you even need a roughly pyramidal mountain. Even a cubic one will do just as well. You are looking along a very long shadow, so the shape is (almost) irrelevant. Is the same principle as looking along a long straight highway - the road is not triangular, but the shape it forms as it recedes to the horizon is a triangle.
It’s not as interesting once you read the explanation, but still a cool trick.
Here’s another one I found when trying to find out on my own.
Thanks for the reply anyway, Colophon!