moon halos?

[Madhatter]

Very occasionaly i see a massive halo around the moon (like tonight), im just wondering what this means? its always on a clear night but with poor viewing..

Is is condensation in the air?

[brianmc]

Is it because you are viewing the moon through wispy cloud that is diffusing the light?

[Beulah]

In my local area a moon halo indicates rain the next day. S'wat the locals say, anyway...

[Steve777]

I saw this too ...

[Madhatter]

I dont think its wispy clouds tbh, of course it might be..but it just seems differant to what i have seen before. Almost to perfect? i dont know how to describe it, i tried to take a photo acctualy but it did not come out right.

The rain the next day is interesting! we are acctualy forcast rain for tonight , will keep an eye on that:).

[Peter Drew]

I was led to believe that it was caused by refraction from ice chrystals suspended in the Ionosphere.

[Stagman]

I dont think its wispy clouds tbh, of course it might be..but it just seems differant to what i have seen before. Almost to perfect? i dont know how to describe it, i tried to take a photo acctualy but it did not come out right.

The rain the next day is interesting! we are acctualy forcast rain for tonight , will keep an eye on that:).

Thin clouds do give the small halo but the best (biggest) I've seen have been when the temperature has been very low. I don't understand the cause either but managed to get this pic...

Moon Halo by SteveP!, on Flickr

[Madhatter]

Thats exactly what i saw! if anything the halo i saw may have been slightly larger or it might just be an optical illusion, it was huge though completly dominated the sky.

Great photo:)

[todd8137]

In my local area a moon halo indicates rain the next day. S'wat the locals say, anyway...

hahahahah

is that when you down on the farm

[RikM]

This is a 22° halo.

It is formed when moonlight diffracts through alternate sides of columnar ice crystals in cirrus, cirrostratus, or cirrocumulus clouds. The angle between the moon and the ring is 22°, hence the name, but they always look much bigger than you expect in the sky.

Steve's image is textbook! You can see the sky is darker inside than outside the ring and the inner edge has a faint red tinge. Fantastic.

You can also see them in the day time formed around the sun, though obviously care is needed viewing or photographing these. A wide angle lens in normally required.

[The_PSY3NTIST]

Saw this a few years ago and it looked amazing

[Madhatter]

I have seen two of these this year (last year included) and i only really started looking up at the skys back in april last year. How common are these halos?.

[JM1311]

My first ever view of one was from Egypt last year, it covered a reasonably large area of the sky. Never seen one since

[Madhatter]

Wow i bet Egypt has some amazing night skys! did you get the chance to do much stargazing?.

[RikM]

Halos in general are quite common, visible on average 100 'days' of the year from somewhere in the UK. It also needs to be quite a bright moon to get a lunar halo so that cuts it down quite a bit. The trick is to be there to see them. I've seen loads but never had my camera handy to take a picture

[JM1311]

Wow i bet Egypt has some amazing night skys! did you get the chance to do much stargazing?.

Unfortunately not! I was only there with work for one night, so only some visual naked eye observation-I would have loved to have had a scope with me that night!