I didn't expected that I'll witness a lunar halo during the night time of December 25, 2012 at around 7:00pm Christmas night here in Cavite, Philippines. I went out of that house to scout for a good location for a fireworks display coming from SM Bacoor, but before the fireworks display, I spotted the moon and its lunar halo glowing so bright above the night sky.
I took a pic of the lunar halo using my Olympus E-520 and in P mode and not using a tripod, I got one good shot with blurry backgrounds. Awesome sight and its my first time to see a lunar halo
What's a lunar halo?
A 22° halo is a halo, one type of optical phenomenon, forming a circle 22° around the sun, or occasionally the moon. It forms as sunlight is refracted in hexagonal ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. As the light beam passes through two sides of the prism forming a 60° angle, the angle of minimum deviation is almost 22° (namely, 21.84° on average; 21.54° for red and 22.37° for blue). This wavelength-dependent variation in refraction causes the inner edge of the circle to be reddish while the outer edge is bluish.[1] A 22° halo may be visible on as many as 100 days per year - more details at Wikipedia
