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Last Post 3/1/2007 2:32 PM by Terry Kucera

rainbow in the night sky

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Anonymous

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3/1/2007 10:08 AM
okay so a couple weeks ago i was taking the trash out and i looked up at the sky. it was full moon that night and i saw this circle around the moon. come to find out it was a rainbow. a rainbow in a circle, fully circling the moon. is that normal. i asked my astronomy teacher and she said that i was a very lucky person to see that b/c it is a rare phenomon. but how in the world did that happen Tina Wright NC

Terry Kucera

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3/1/2007 2:32 PM
Hi Tina Yes, it is normal. That is called a "halo". It is related to rainbows that you see in the daytime. Regular rainbows are from sunlight, but something similar can happen with moon light. There is some information about it on the web pages below. They say with halos about the moon it is usually caused by ice crystals in the atmosphere, and that multicolored ones are rare. I have seen one too, though. http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc....opt/ice/halo/22.rxml http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/circmoon.htm There is a nice image at http://www.astropix.com/HTML/SHOW_DIG/009.HTM Terry