..........A little blog about the little things in life..........

Friday, February 26, 2010

Ring Around the Moon

Last night around 11:00 I peeked outside and noticed an unusual sight - there was a large ring around the moon!  I attempted a photo or two.  This morning I did a little google research and found out that this is caused by a refraction of moonlight upon a layer of microscopic ice crystals in the atmosphere.  The shape of the ice crystals (hexogonal) results in a focusing of light into a ring.  I've seen smaller rings, but this was the largest one I've ever seen.  I almost couldn't get it in the photo frame.  These are sometimes refered to as lunar halos.  In folklore, it signifies bad weather is coming.  I'll let you know if that happens!  (It is supposed to rain tomorrow).  (Saturday night update......Well, a storm blew in this afternoon and it's been raining for hours, so guess that bad weather thing is for real!)

The first photo is mine, the last one came off the internet.




3 comments:

Melanie Statnick said...

that is really beautiful. I love that you took the time, to research this. How lucky for you, that you caught one of mother nature's treasures

DAnna said...

Well, you can take the teacher out of the classroom, but not the classroom out of the teacher....or something like that! And I always like to learn new stuff and I'm glad that others do too! Thanks for your comment, Melanie.

Kath said...

You did well with these pics, nice job, very atmospheric!