THE appearance of a ring around the Moon can sometimes be seen when the atmospheric conditions are right.
Sometimes the ring can appear to have a rainbow effect which can also have bright spots,
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Why is there a ring around the moon?
In short, the visual phenomenon is caused by light refracting through hexagonal ice crystals.
It forms a 22 degree ring around the Moon.
A 22 degree halo may be visible on as many as 100 days per year.
As no light is refracted at angles smaller than 22 degrees, the sky is darker inside the halo.
The bright spots that can sometimes be seen either side of the Moon – either North-South or East-West are known as Moon Dogs.
A circle can also be formed around the Sun but when it forms around the Moon it is known as a Moon Ring or Winter Halo.
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What causes a ring around the moon?
The ring, or halo effect, is caused by the refraction of sunlight through ice crystals in the upper atmosphere, around 3-6 miles above the Earth.
Usually the ring is seen along with cirrus clouds, the thin, wispy clouds seen at high altitude.
The ice crystals always have a hexagonal shape meaning that any light which passes through them will always refract at the same angle – 22 degrees.
We see a rainbow because the different colors are refracted at slightly different angles.
The light is broken up into its separate colors because the huge number of crystals all refract at different angles due to their position in the sky, and so you see the colors split up like a rainbow.
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What does a ring around the moon symbolize?
According to folklore a ring around the moon means that a storm is coming soon.
In reality this isn’t strictly true.
The ring appears when the sky is covered with those cirrus or cirrostratus clouds that often appear a few days before a storm but those clouds can also occur without any associated weather change.
Florida man captures August’s spectacular ‘Sturgeon Moon’ in the morning
