Atmospheric moon halo? What the heck is this phenomenon? Never seen it before.

joel_yancey

joel_yancey

Member
First post! Long time Metabunk silent fly on the wall...
  • Tonight I went outside and there appeared to be this ring in the sky centered around the moon, of about 50 to 100 moons in diameter
  • It seems to have to do with the atmosphere/clouds (light scattering?)
  • This is not an effect of the camera. It was easily visible to the naked eye, looking up in San Diego, CA.
Has anyone seen this before? Very unsure what the physical explanation is, but I am sure that someone on here knows instantly. Your response is greatly appreciated .

20250310_212655.jpg
 
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It's just a 22° ice halo. Quite normal. You'll see them a lot more often if you look for them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/22°_halo
External Quote:
A 22° halo is an atmospheric optical phenomenon that consists of a halo with an apparent radius of approximately 22° around the Sun or Moon. Around the Sun, it may also be called a sun halo.[1]​ Around the Moon, it is also known as a moon ring, storm ring, or winter halo. It forms as sunlight or moonlight is refracted by millions of hexagonal ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere.[2]​ Its radius, as viewed from Earth, is roughly the length of an outstretched hand at arm's length.[3]​

2025-03-10_22-37-08.jpg
 
Mick West said:
It's just a 22° ice halo. Quite normal. You'll see them a lot more often if you look for them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/22°_halo
External Quote:
A 22° halo is an atmospheric optical phenomenon that consists of a halo with an apparent radius of approximately 22° around the Sun or Moon. Around the Sun, it may also be called a sun halo.[1]​ Around the Moon, it is also known as a moon ring, storm ring, or winter halo. It forms as sunlight or moonlight is refracted by millions of hexagonal ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere.[2]​ Its radius, as viewed from Earth, is roughly the length of an outstretched hand at arm's length.[3]​

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Ah, awesome. Thank you for the prompt explanation Mick! Keep up the good work.
 
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For anyone curious, attached are some additional images. These were taken with my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. Except for the first attachment in this post (20250310_212513.jpg) they were taken with the camera in 'Night' mode.
 

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The odd thing about the ice crystals explanation is that this was in Lemon Grove (southern San Diego), California on March 10, 2025. A place where it rarely rains relative to Northern California where I grew up (Sacramento native). The high was 70 °F in Lemon Grove, CA yesterday without any precipitation. I was outside in a T-shirt.
Source on temperature/precipitation yesterday in Lemon Grove, CA: https://www.wunderground.com/history/daily/us/ca/lemon-grove/KSAN/date/2025-3-10
 
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joel_yancey said:
The odd thing about the ice crystals explanation is that this was in Lemon Grove (southern San Diego), California on March 10, 2025. A place where it rarely rains relative to Northern California where I grew up (Sacramento native). The high was 70 °F in Lemon Grove, CA yesterday without any precipitation. I was outside in a T-shirt.
Source on temperature/precipitation yesterday in Lemon Grove, CA: https://www.wunderground.com/history/daily/us/ca/lemon-grove/KSAN/date/2025-3-10
Click to expand...
The ice crystals/cirrus are typically quite high up (tens of thousands of feet altitude), where the temperature is going to be much less than 70 degrees. My photo was taken about 5pm on April 30, 2021 in the SF Bay Area, and the local air temperature was also around 70 degrees.
 
Quick update on the San Diego ice situation:
Less than 12 hours after those images of the 22° lunar halo were taken it began to rain here. As I was driving around 13:30 PDT, 17 hours after witnessing the 22° lunar halo—like clockwork—what started as rain suddenly turned into hail! Several more times weather switched between rain and hail over the course of my drive. Needless to say this is a fairly unusual weather event for San Diego.

Thank you prescient people, your predictions were totally correct. I love testable hypotheses!
 
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