Moon Halo in the pitch dark

A moon halo is this enchanting optical phenomenon caused by the refraction and reflection of light, mostly through ice crystals in thin, cirrus or cirrostratus clouds high in the atmosphere. It results in a ring of light around the moon that looks almost supernatural. It’s pretty special when you catch one! You get to see a glimpse of how light and ice play together in our atmosphere.

To see a moon halo, you need three main ingredients: a bright moon (usually a full moon), clear skies, and those high, thin cirrus or cirrostratus clouds with ice crystals way up in the atmosphere. When the light of the moon hits those ice crystals, it bends and creates that mystical ring. It's like nature’s own little light show! 

It is quite fascinating now days to photograph night skies with your cellular phone. I mean it was almost pitch dark, but pointing phone on the sky and press the shutter button and 3 seconds later you get this.

My other blogs:

Roadscape Photography
Chevrolet El Camino 1970
Life @ Köyliö, mostly Finnish

Walking in the moonlight

No, this isn't taken on the day. This was actually shot 5:24 am a few days ago. It shows how far current generation of mobile phone's cameras has evolved. I couldn't dream of this few years ago. 

Moonlight consists of mostly sunlight (with little Earthlight) reflected from the parts of the Moon's surface where the Sun's light strikes.

The intensity of moonlight varies greatly depending on the lunar phase, but even the full moon typically provides only about 0.05–0.1 lux illumination.[2] When a full Moon around perigee (a "supermoon") is viewed around upper culmination from the tropics, the illuminance can reach up to 0.32 lux.[2] From Earth, the apparent magnitude of the full Moon is only about 1⁄380,000 that of the Sun.

The Moon's bond albedo is 0.12,[3] meaning only 12% of incident sunlight is reflected from the lunar surface. Moonlight takes approximately 1.26 seconds to reach Earth's surface. Scattered in Earth's atmosphere, moonlight generally increases the brightness of the night sky, reducing contrast between dimmer stars and the background. For this reason, many astronomers usually avoid observing sessions around a full moon.

My other blogs:

Roadscape Photography
Chevrolet El Camino 1970
Life @ Loimaa, mostly Finnish