This spectacular sky wonder is reserved for our coldest winter nights! When temperatures plunge and conditions are just right, light pillars appear like multi-coloured columns that shine up, not down. It is an ethereal light display, one perfectly captured in this engraved design that incorporates colour and invisible black light technology.

An unexpected upside to extreme cold weather, light pillars can occur when clouds sit lower in the atmosphere. Within these clouds are millions of hexagonal-plate ice crystals that drift horizontally in the air. And like clusters of tiny mirrors pointing down from different heights, these crystals reflect natural and artificial light from the ground below, and in the same colour emitted by the source.

The reverse design by Tony Bianco features a nighttime scene on an extremely cold winter night in Canada. Above the engraved city streets, the clear night sky is coloured and enhanced with invisible black light technology, which re-creates the light pillar optical phenomenon when activated by ultraviolet light. The obverse features the effigy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II by Susanna Blunt.