"Crepuscular rays (more commonly known as sunbeams, sun rays, or god rays), in atmospheric optics, are rays of sunlight that appear to radiate from the point in the sky where the sun is located. These rays, which stream through gaps in clouds (particularly stratocumulus) or between other objects, are columns of sunlit air separated by darker cloud-shadowed regions. Despite seeming to converge at a point, the rays are in fact near-parallel shafts of sunlight. Their apparent convergence is a perspective effect, similar, for example, to the way that parallel railway lines seem to converge at a point in the distance.
The name comes from their frequent occurrences during twilight hours (those around dawn and dusk), when the contrasts between light and dark are the most obvious. Crepuscular comes from the Latin word "crepusculum", meaning twilight."Wikipedia
People see these all the time but may not have known what they were looking at. Sun rays coming through the clouds making sunbeams? Crazy light and dark shadows up in the clouds once the sun has gone down? All crepuscular rays.
These are really cool, and one evening, instead of the normal sunset in clear skies, these awe inspiring spikes radiated from the setting sun. I grabbed my camera because I had never seen anything like this! What caused this was clouds over the horizon not visible, blocking out parts of the setting sunlight creating these "rays".
The picture quality isn't the best because I was using my old Canon DRebel which wasn't very good in low light
I wish I had more time to have left and found some cool foreground, but this effect did not last very long.
Thanks for checking these out! Be sure to look at my other photography on my blog