The Moon just now in the UK. No idea what is creating the halo

  • skeletorfw@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    26
    ·
    7 months ago

    That would be a 22° halo, a fairly uncommon atmospheric phenomenon where light refracts through hexagonal ice crystals in the atmosphere resulting in an average deviation from the angle it comes in at by around (funnily enough) 22°.

    There are lots of other interesting atmospheric phenomena including sundogs, moonbows, and the much rarer 46° halo!

    • TWeaK@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      7 months ago

      Oh nice, I’ve seen this before in Florida but was unable to capture it in my phone’s camera. Didn’t realise it had a name!

      sundogs

      You’re just making things up now XD

      • dirtySourdough@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        7 months ago

        Though it sounds silly, sundogs are the name of an actual optic phenomena. They appear as bright spots on either side of the sun, aligned with where the halo may appear. Hence, they are “dogging” the sun.

        • TWeaK@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          7 months ago

          Yarp, I looked it up. The etymology section is fun, I like to think there’s no real meaning behind it, someone just called it that and the name stuck.

    • livus@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      7 months ago

      the much rarer 46° halo

      If that’s the really huge halo that seems to take up most of the sky, I’ve only seen that perhaps 3x in my life.

      Are they not collectively called coronas, in your part of the world? They are here.

  • nadram@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    7 months ago

    We saw the same tonight as well from northern Italy about 2 hours ago. The moonlight interacts with ice crystals in the air and creates this rainbow / halo 🤯

    • ndguardian@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      7 months ago

      Yeah, if there’s an atoptics (I think that’s the word) community, they’d be all over that!

  • livus@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    7 months ago

    Ice crystals. The old-fashioned name for it is a corona, and according to folk wisdom, a corona of that size is usually a harbinger of cold weather coming.

  • doleo@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    7 months ago

    back before internet days, me and the boys got the fear while out smoking, seeing this in the night sky.

    • theodewere@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      7 months ago

      that’s when you start howling and chase the evil spirits away man… oh right you said smoking not drinking…

  • Stretch2m@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    7 months ago

    “A ring around the sun or moon, means that rain will come real soon.” Old sailors adage.

  • 🇰 🔵 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    No idea what is creating the halo

    If not the cloud cover or other atmospheric conditions, the lens of the camera the image was taken with. Was the halo visible to the naked eye or only in the photo?

  • Thorry84@feddit.nl
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    7 months ago

    Don’t read any of the other explanations, they just spout off the same thing they want you to think!

    I did my own research, it turns out this is due to ice crystals. The inside of the dome set on top of the flat earth is covered by LCD displays. These displays get cold in wintertime and ice crystals form within the displays. This causes all sorts of visual glitches, like these halos around the moon. When it warms back up the ice crystals go away and the moon looks normal again.

    Don’t let people fool you with bullshit stories about ice crystals in the so called atmosphere. It’s a totally made up story, with just enough truth in it to make it believable.