360° Enormous Moon Halo [#A1]

So I guess this is popping the cherry on the Blog section of this website…

While I was hoping to kick off the blog with something way more interesting (yes, I have high aspirations), this is still something I really wanted to share with everyone because I have personally never seen something like this before.

Last night – evening of April 10, 2020, at about 11:05 PM I stepped outside for a cigarette. It was a bright night, but I didn’t think much of it since we have had some of those recently with near full moons, and of course the pink super moon that just happened. While being outside, I decided to take some food to the complex guard house as I didn’t want it to go to waste. So off I went.

As I came walking back from the complex guard house, passing through the huge roundabout, filled with a fountain and plants, situated right after the boomed entrance to the complex, I looked up at the moon and couldn’t believe my eyes. The sky was fairly misty, blurring out the outlines of the moon, causing it to look like one big diffusion of light. This of course explained the bright night – the sky was so lit up that the clouds appeared to emit light. Then, what blew me away was this massive halo in the sky, with the moon right at its center! This halo even appeared to have color in it, almost like a rainbow. In fact, it had a similar effect that a lens flare has on a camera lens; some red-green-yellow in there.

I hurried back to my unit, rushed up stairs to grab my camera and told my fiancé I am going to take pictures of the moon. By the time I got outside I was locked and loaded! Unfortunately, the halo was so big that I could not get it in the view finder if I wanted the moon in it as well. Yes, it was huge. I tried my other lenses too just to be sure… but to no avail. I just really had to try and capture it, so I turned to my mobile phone since it gets a much wider angle.

The following photos were the result. I did not try to post process these photos since I really couldn’t capture much detail, but it does kind of show the halo I mentioned. Something is better than nothing I suppose, but I really wish I could capture what this looked like to the naked eye.

Luckily, and coincidentally, I was still busy working on some things to the wee hours of the morning. Around 1:00 AM I stepped outside for a last smoke before finishing up for bed. When I looked up the moon was right above me, presenting itself for an entirely different photo. The moon was slightly more clear, but the clouding around it was something to be seen. It made me think of a portal with light at the end of it. Again, I ran for my camera and took the shot. When processing it, I had to sacrifice detail of the moon itself, to allow this beautiful portal, to be seen.

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