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Rainbow Around the Moon

Uncayimmy

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Oct 14, 2008
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There was a rainbow circle around the moon this evening. I rushed to get a few photos, but I don't know squat about night shots (I do portraits and buildings). The first lens I used couldn't get the full circle. By the time I slapped on a different lens, the rainbow was fading and almost gone. Anyway, here are a couple of shots.



 
More evidence for water then? Could've saved NASA a bundle.
 
Local paper had an article on this. It's called a halo, right?

I think the old wives tale is that they mean snow.
Click to expand...
I think that's when there's a bright field just around the moon itself.
 
They show up quite nicely when there's high thin cloud cover, quite bright too. My cellphone camera won't take pictures in the dark at all (tried to snap a tp-ed house in the dark, right under a streetlight, barely showed up) and I don't know if the disposable camera can take dark shots. I saw them every night for weeks this summer.
 
We've had some really amazing halos here too. Tends to happen when there's a lot of moisture in the atmosphere, but not a lot in the way of cloud cover (at least, that's what I've observed, not that it means anything really).

They're really pretty in any case :)
 
UncaYimmy said:
... I don't know squat about night shots (I do portraits and buildings).
Click to expand...

My first thought would be an approach similar to a coronagraph. Mask out the moon using a solid dot, stop down the lens for maximum depth-of-field (thus keeping the dot in sharp focus), and crank up the exposure-time to get as much dynamic range as possible.
 
UncaYimmy said:
There was a rainbow circle around the moon this evening. I rushed to get a few photos, but I don't know squat about night shots (I do portraits and buildings). The first lens I used couldn't get the full circle. By the time I slapped on a different lens, the rainbow was fading and almost gone. Anyway, here are a couple of shots.

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_281604b16112bf393d.jpg[/qimg]

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_281604b1614c0ccdd5.jpg[/qimg]
Click to expand...

Nice 22 degree Lunar Halo.

The Atmospheric Optics site is a great reference for such phenomena.
 
I happened to take a couple of photos of this in Columbus, but then a few days later I saw a better one in Pittsburgh, and there it's more common and can be seen through cloud cover, but here's my shots.

l_b88450b071d4423680c296e919fa25e8.jpg


l_f45fbdab8242494680db24d07f35e693.jpg


Simple zoom lens on an old digital timed exposure.

Oh, I didn't take any shots of the Pittsburgh one, while visiting I left my camera at another house.
 
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I have seen numerous rainbows around the moon in Hawaii. They are beautiful.
 
At my university, we have two competing theories. Either the rainbow was an Independence Day style alien ship come to kill us all or it was a signal for the Jesuits (I go to Xavier) to pile into the light-up clocktower of the the student center and blast off into space, like the Albertian Order of Leibowitz.

Personally, I'm a fan on the second one.
 
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