When American war correspondent and photographer Michael Yon went accompanying US soldiers to Afghanistan in 2009, and began photographing the troops and their equipment there, he noticed an unusual phenomenon. Whenever a helicopter was taking off or descending and there was lots of sand in the air, the blades of the rotors began to glow like “distant galaxies”.
“The halos spark, glitter and veritably crackle, but in still photos the halos appear more like intricate orbital bands,” Michael Yon wrote in a blog post.
“The halos usually disappear as the rotors change pitch, dust diminishes and the ramp touches the ground,” he wrote.
Kopp–Etchells Effect seen on a U.S. Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey at an undisclosed location in Southwest Asia. Photo: Lance Cpl. Clarence Leake/Cpl. Akeel Austin/Wikimedia Commons
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