Moon Red Halo

January 29, 2015 by Elizabeth Melton Parsons 32 Comments

Around 11:30 last night I was standing on the porch enjoying the the night sky when I noticed the moon had a giant red halo. I believe they call it a 22 degree halo. I’ve seen plenty of moon halos as well as sun halos, but I’d never seen anything like this. The ring was huge and thick, but it was the color that was so phenomenal. It was blood red. Amazing. I was disappointed I had no way to capture an image of it. My phone and camera aren’t worth two pennies when taking a shot of this kind of night image. I found a similar image on wikimedia. You’ll have to imagine this ring being much thicker and a blood red color, then you’ll have an idea of what I witnessed. I went back out at midnight to look again, but the ring had dissipated. They say a red ring around the moon means bad weather. I don’t know about that, but it did rain this morning. 😀 It actually has to do with refraction of moonlight/sunlight reflection  and ice crystals. Did any of you see this large red ring last night? Were you fortunate enough to get a photo? If so, I’d love to see it.

Here’s the image from wikimedia:

 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:22_degree_halo_around_the_moon.jpg