Anti-solar rays (a.k.a. anti-crepuscular rays) seen from a jet window off the coast of Moloka’i, Hawaii:

Most of the time when I’m flying somewhere, I’m stuck in whatever seat I happened to be assigned.  But every once in a while, I get lucky.

This was one of the very lucky times.

We took a family trip to Hawaii this past Thanksgiving (for non U.S. folks, it’s a harvest-related holiday in late November).  One of the inter-island flights we were on happened to be very lightly filled — maybe one seat in 5 held a passenger.  This meant, of course, that once we reached cruising altitude, I was free to move around and look for a good photo opportunity.

Since we took off just before sunset, and it had been a hazy / rainy afternoon, conditions were perfect for crepuscular rays.  As it turned out, getting airborne made conditions even better for anti-crepuscular rays — in both cases, parallel rays of sunlight appear to converge thanks to the viewer’s perspective.  In this case, the anti-solar point is just off the island of Moloka’i.