A RAINBOW RING WRAPPED THE FULL MOON

 A RAINBOW RING WRAPPED THE FULL MOON 

If you ever see this… look up and stay still.
It starts as a quiet, bright moon… then you notice the perfect circle of color around it.

This is a lunar halo: moonlight passes through thin high clouds filled with tiny ice crystals, and those crystals bend the light into a clean circle (usually about 22° around the Moon). When the air is cold and the clouds are just thin enough, the ring becomes sharp and bright...exactly like this.

It shows up most often on cold, clear nights in places like the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, where icy upper clouds can drift in while the sky stays dark and clean.

You’re most likely to spot this on cold nights with wispy clouds forest areas or any high, chilly region where thin ice-clouds drift overhead.