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If you ’ve ever looked up at the full lunar month in the night sky , you may have noticed a magnanimous halo of light around it . But why does this shining mob sometimes encircle our natural artificial satellite ?
While it might seem like a preindication you ask a raw glasses prescription , it ’s really have by icing watch glass eminent up in the atmosphere .
Rings can appear around the moon because of ice crystals high in the atmosphere.
" These small ice crystals in reality refract the ignitor from the moon , " saidKara Lamb , an associate research scientist in the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering at Columbia University .
Those water ice crystals accumulate incirrus cloud — cloud of pure ice in the stratosphere , up to 31 statute mile ( 50 kilometers ) above earth . " Because cirrus clouds imprint in high spirits up and can be pretty thin , you may not even watch over that there are really obvious clouds there by eye , " Lamb told Live Science .
The halo is always the same size , no matter where you are in the world or what the atmospheric condition is like that twenty-four hour period . If you were to measure out it — which you could do byholding your hired hand out widewith your thumb on the synodic month and your outstretched little finger on the halo — you ’d see it was around 22 degree across-the-board . That ’s due to the flesh of the ice crystals .
Rings can appear around the moon because of ice crystals high in the atmosphere.
Related : Will Earth ever miss its lunar month ?
" More often than not , they have a sort of hexagonal shape , a routine like this pencil , " saidPhilip Laven , an amateur scientist in the U.K. who has co - authoredmultipleacademicpaperson atmospherical eye .
These hexagonal , column - mold ice watch glass turn the lighter in a specific way . When brightness get in one of the hexagon ’s six sides , it ’s bent , or refract , a small bit . It ’s dead set again when the ignitor pop off the other side of the hexagon , resulting in a full bend of 22 degrees . This is honest no matter what orientation the watch glass has .
Diagram that shows the 22-degree phenomenon that causes a halo to appear around the moon.
The event is that lightness move from the moon to your optic detour through the icing watch crystal and ends up 22 degrees away from where it started . This forms a glowing halo around the lunation .
" If you see a 22 - degree halo , you might also , if you ’re very favorable , see a 46 - stage halo , which is enormous . It covers half the sky , " Laven told Live Science .
That go on when light travel from one side of the hexagon to one of theflat ends of the columnor vice versa , which bend the luminosity even more to make an even heavy halo .
Moon halos are associated with bad weather in folklore.
But what does it all mean ? In folklore , a moon doughnut is a sign that bad weather condition is amount . Lamb said that ’s not far from the truth .
" I conceive it make horse sense because there are two different ways you’re able to shape cirrus clouds in the atmosphere , " she say .
One way is the " in situ " class , in which warm air rises mellow enough to freeze into frappe lechatelierite .
" But the other room that they form is when you have these cumulonimbus clouds — these big loom tempest clouds , " Lamb enunciate . " And then you ’ll get cirrus clouds that imprint from the anvil [ or top ] of these storm clouds . So it would make sense that you would see the cirrhus cloud preceding these bombastic tempest system . "
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Halos are n’t unique to the synodic month . They can also happen around the sun , though they can be harder to spot because the sun is so lustrous .
Halos even happen on other planets .
" you may have ice crystal on Mars , " Lamb said . " Clouds that are formed out of CO2 shape internal-combustion engine vitreous silica . "
ThePerseverance rover even blob a sun ring on Marsin December 2021 .
lunation halos are part of several related phenomena , includingsun wiener , saturated patches of sun on the right wing or give of the sun which are induce by plate - shaped hexagonal ice watch crystal ; and thecorona , a smaller , rainbow - color ring of light around the synodic month or Lord’s Day stimulate by H2O droplets in the atmosphere .
