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

  • skeletorfw@lemmy.world
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    11 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
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      11 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
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        11 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
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          11 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
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      11 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.

      • skeletorfw@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Yeah that’s the one! Only seen it once (coinciding with a supermoon which was frankly surreal).

        Coronas are a bit different I believe, though another one of the same group. I’ve always just called them their individual names, with coronas being tighter and more spectrally-distorting than halos. Maybe the only other collective name I’ve heard would be the minimally descriptive “atmospheric phenomenon” but that’s no fun at all.

        Edit: Just took a brief look and indeed coronas are related but formed by refraction through water droplets rather than ice crystals! Cool to know!

  • nadram@lemmy.world
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    11 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
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      11 months ago

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

  • livus@kbin.social
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    11 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.

  • Thorry84@feddit.nl
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    11 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.

  • doleo@kbin.social
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    11 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
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      11 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
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    11 months ago

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