Ring around moon

[tcsenter]

I star gazed a lot as a kid and early adolescent but do not ever remember seeing a ring like this:

Sometimes the inner ring would be visible but not the giant outer ring. However, I spent all of my childhood and a portion of adulthood up to 30-ish in Michigan. I currently live in California. Almost every full moon, it has this ring around it. Is there something different in the atmosphere that can account for this like pollution or smog or is it the change in geography/angles of viewing the moon? Or maybe just poor recollection?

 

[disappoint]

I'm sure that's not out of focus, overexposed nor lens flare.

Therefore, it must be aliens. They set up a force field. WTF took them so long?

-or-


WTF is this shit? I don't even....

 

[randomrogue]

Cool shot.

It's probably something atmospheric. I've seen that before and never thought anything of it. You can get some pretty weird things with fog, wisps of clouds, smoke, and so on. Wait until you get a forest fire. The sun looks crazy too.

 

[brainhulk]

obvious double rainbow is obvious

 

[darkswordsman17]

Yeah its caused from ice or moisture particles in the atmosphere.

Its quite...disorienting though. I remember in high school seeing it do that one time, it was almost scary. It look like the outline of some giant planet behind the moon.

 

[Phoenix86]

I saw that the other night, it was very odd...

 

[tcsenter]

No, its exactly like that with my own eyes but I couldn't capture it with my camera. At least, not remotely as well as this photo I found. It looks just like that when I go out and look up at it. And I've seen it like this several dozens of times since I've lived here in CA. Never seen a ring like this from Michigan.

 

[darkswordsman17]

No, its exactly like that with my own eyes but I couldn't capture it with my camera. At least, not remotely as well as this photo I found. It looks just like that when I go out and look up at it. And I've seen it like this several dozens of times since I've lived here in CA. Never seen a ring like this from Michigan.

I'm sure its because of all the extra crap in the atmosphere around there. A bit odd though that you didn't see it in Michigan, I'd think it would happen more often in a colder climate, but it seems to need the right atmospheric situation and SoCal seems to have more, probably from the pollution.

 

[PingviN]

Looks like a halo phenomenon, which is caused by ice crystals in the atmosphere

 

[tcsenter]

Here's the best I could do with my camera, just by hand and not playing around with the camera settings other than using the 'landscape/infinity' preset (pretty steady hand if I don't say so myself, of course this is the sharpest of about six photos I took):

Its much more impressive than captured in my photo, so that's why I went looking for an image on the net and zoinks! The OP photo is more consistent with what I'm seeing. Maybe my recollection is bad, I don't know. It was 30 years ago.

 

[tcsenter]

And now, its gone. The inner ring is still there, more faint but there, while the giant outer ring is absent. Maybe a refractory angle thingy?

 

[olds]

Better than a ring around Uranus.
you know someone had to go there

 

[dmcowen674]

I star gazed a lot as a kid and early adolescent but do not ever remember seeing a ring like this:

Ice crystals

Very common site in northern Latitudes

 

[jamesbond007]

I'm not entirely sure you'd call it a parhelion as it is not a ring around the sun, but it looks like a 'sun dog' at night. As others have already stated, it's very common in my neck of the woods. It's just freezing moisture in the air forming ice crystals that reflect light.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Looks like a halo phenomenon, which is caused by ice crystals in the atmosphere

Yep, that's it.

 

[Pardus]

http://earthsky.org/space/what-makes-a-halo-around-the-moon

 

[preslove]

Better than a ring around Uranus.
you know someone had to go there

Uranus has a ton of rings around it.