There’s an old weather saying: ring around the moon means rain soon. And boy oh boy has it been raining since then:-)
There’s truth to this saying, because high cirrus clouds often come before a storm. Notice in these photos that the sky looks fairly clear. After all, you can see the moon. And yet halos are a sign of high thin cirrus clouds drifting 20,000 feet or more above our heads.
These clouds contain millions of tiny ice crystals. The halos you see are caused by both refraction, or splitting of light, and also by reflection, or glints of light from these ice crystals. The crystals have to be oriented and positioned just so with respect to your eye, in order for the halo to appear.
I managed to capture this halo around the Super full moon from my home at around 8pm.
