CLARKSBURG, W.Va. (WBOY) — If you’ve looked up at the moon over the past 24 hours, you may have noticed a ring of light surrounding it. This ring is called a “moon halo” and, contrary to what you might think, is fairly common.
According to space.com, this ring is created by an optical illusion caused by the refraction of moonlight from ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. These little specks of ice basically turn the atmosphere into a giant lens which causes these rings to appear around either the moon or the sun.
Because the moon halo requires ice to form, they’re usually fairly common in places that are cold year-round and appear most often in the winter.
Like the full moons we often cover, the moon halo has folklore surrounding it over the years which mainly describes it as being a predictor of bad weather.
