Spectacular Moon Ring
Last night Joe and I were out walking the dog. We live in the horse capital of the world, so there is a lot of dark farm land around us, giving us spectacular views of the heavens. I can’t say that I always look up to see what is going on out there, but during our walk I remembered that on March 19, 2011 we are supposed to have a ‘supermoon’. An event where the moon is the closest to the earth, and as a bonus for us earthlings it will be a full moon.
I wondered if the moon would appear any different to me and looked up. The sight that I beheld literally took my breath away! The moon shown brightly and was surrounded by an enormous halo. The moon hung in the center of this ring and a few stars danced and twinkled like diamonds.
Before I looked up a jet must have flown by, leaving a chem-trail in its wake. This chem-trail sliced across the entire circle. The most amazing thing was the chem-trail had a shadow which was above the actual gas cloud. I believe this was because the moon was so bright it was reflecting back up from the ground. As we watched the chem-trail moved across the moon and within minutes it cleared the circle.
But the circle remained unchanged, so what was causing this phenomena? Echoing my thoughts Joe said to call my brother. I dialed his number while Joe snapped away pictures. When my brother answered I asked him to go outside and look at the moon.
I did not have any hopes that he would see the ring as he was a two hour drive due east of my position. As I waited for him to confirm I heard him calling out the family to see the moon! Amazing, I thought.
We snapped off a dozen pictures using our iPhones. Unfortunately none of the pictures came out. I did find out what a moon-ring is.
A halo around the moon is caused by ice crystals high in the atmosphere. The moon’s light reflects on these crystals that are in the basic hexagonal shape and relevant size to one another. Moon Rings or Halos are almost always about the same size.
In ancient times, a moon halo signified that bad weather was coming. It is said that counting the number of stars in the halo signifies the amount of days before the bad weather will arrive. Wish I knew this before – we didn’t think about counting the number of stars!
As for the Super-Moon on March 19th, I do not believe that it will create earth devastations in an apocalyptical way, but do think the Earth feels the gravitational tug of the moon and may cause some earthquakes and volcanic activity, which lately has been quite high based on the maps I have recently reviewed.
However, if you can, it should be worth seeing and photographing. The moon will be around 360,000 km (223,693 mi) from the earth. This event has only happened 15 times in the last 400 years.
