Posted on 01/03/2022 6:13:58 AM PST by MtnClimber
Explanation: Sometimes falling ice crystals make the atmosphere into a giant lens causing arcs and halos to appear around the Sun or Moon. One Saturday night in 2012 was just such a time near Madrid, Spain, where a winter sky displayed not only a bright Moon but four rare lunar halos. The brightest object, near the top of the featured image, is the Moon. Light from the Moon refracts through tumbling hexagonal ice crystals into a somewhat rare 22-degree halo seen surrounding the Moon. Elongating the 22-degree arc horizontally is a more rare circumscribed halo caused by column ice crystals. Even more rare, some moonlight refracts through more distant tumbling ice crystals to form a (third) rainbow-like arc 46 degrees from the Moon and appearing here just above a picturesque winter landscape. Furthermore, part of a whole 46-degree circular halo is also visible, so that an extremely rare -- especially for the Moon -- quadruple halo was captured. Far in the background is a famous winter skyscape that includes Sirius, the belt of Orion, and Betelgeuse -- visible between the inner and outer arcs. Halos and arcs typically last for minutes to hours, so if you do see one there should be time to invite family, friends or neighbors to share your unusual lensed vista of the sky.
For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.
Cool!
I wonder if the author is mistaking lens aberrations for moon halos.
:)
Beautiful! Would be interesting to know what camera setup he used. The trees look almost 3-D. I’m on a tablet, so didn’t get any control buttons to zoom or anything but cool to see the HD at the link. Detail is amazing!
Whenever you see that, you know it’s gonna be colder than hell.
CC
A bit of weather lore I heard when I was young was that a ring around the moon means a storm is coming, and the number of stars within the ring shows how many days until the storm. Probably as accurate as most of those rules.
Extremely rare is right! My eyes bugged out, too, like the little gray one.
Interesting but that’s not from this picture. The 3 yeti are in the upper left corner.
Ice crystals in the air are making that effect, plus a really wide angle lens, plus the photographer is really good!
LOL, I know...
Ping
Which one is Big Mike? :-)
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