Thursday night's clouds and bright moon produced an interesting optical display.
And folks on Social Media were really talking about it.
We call this a Moon Halo. Its an optical phenomenon formed when the light from the moon (or sun) is refracted through cirrus clouds. Cirrus clouds are thin wispy sheets of hexagonal ice crystals usually above 20,000 feet above the Earth's surface. These ice crystals are forms from super-cooled water droplets.
Because of the angles of the hexagonal ice crystals, the halo is always at 22-degree orientation, or roughly 44 times the size of the moon. Since the different colors that make up white light refract at different angles, the inside of the halo appears red, while the outside appears blue.
