A Lunar Halo

Abstract

LAST evening, about 7.15 p.m., a lunar halo of a peculiar character was seen here. It was at some distance from the moon, and instead of being, as usual, concentric with this body, was of an oval, or, more strictly speaking, a horse-shoe shape, the lower part of the halo not being complete. The moon, too, was not in the approximate centre of the horse-shoe. Supposing its distance from the vertex to be represented by the quantity 1, 2½ would represent its distance to the loner part of the halo. Some heavy mist-clouds lay under the moon, which thinned out and became more transparent upwards, and refraction from the dense parts of these may have been the cause of the curious distortion of the circle in this case.