Moonrise and Lunar Corona

February 08, 2004

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Provided by: Daniel Girard, Club d'astronomie Sirius du Saguenay
Summary authors & editors: Daniel Girard; Jim Foster

I was taking some pictures of the northern lights on this winter's night near my home in Quebec, Canada and I happened to notice this stunning lunar corona. Minute water droplets (or even ice crystals) in clouds may interfere with light rays and produce interference rings. The size of the rings depends not only on the wavelength of light but also on the size of the droplets - smaller droplets produce larger rings. With coronae, as opposed to halos, the rings of light appear very near the Moon or Sun.

Photo details: Fujica Reflex ST-801 (35 years old) 24mm lens at F/3.5 using a 3 second exposure on Fuji Superia X-tra 800 film.

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