Unusual Moon Halo ?

[gdkoala]

Hi People.
I have a question about what I observed last night in Northern NSW.
Before I start, i am knew to here and I am disappointed that your site like others shows the Northern Hemisphere view of the Moon.
My conversations with my son starts with.” It looks the opposite to this but…”

Anyway, I drive trucks and about 8pm AEDST just south of Woodburn, NSW, I observed what looked like 2 Waxing Crescent Moons. A Halo ?.. Not 22deg apart though.
Doing some digging I found it was a 4 degree waxing, so the gap between the two was no more than that thickness. The 2nd crescent looked a bit more glowie and was only slightly larger so I have assumed the lower to be a Halo. Both were ‘C’ shaped with the black gap between them also ‘C’ shaped so they were parallel. Bright Venus was well above so No stars were visible closeby.

Can’t find any pics of this phenomenon and didn’t get any myself that are useful. There were clouds in the area as I couldn’t always see the moon and it was too low once I went South of Grafton.

I have assumed I just happened to be in the right 50km stretch, just long enough after sunset with the Moon just high enough to observe this.


Hope someone finds this interesting and can confirm my possible answer.
:hi:

[OzEclipse]

Using your description, I can't visualize it. How about making and uploading a sketch? Joe

[JA]

Hello Greg,

if you saw the image with your naked eye, not through a lens or through a window we can rule out lens flare, but the reason for what is going on is not probably not that dissimilar, i.e: multiple reflections. In the lens or window it's caused by reflections at the various air/glass interfaces, in the atmosphere (probably like the case you observed), it's possibly caused by differences in the refractive indicies of various layers of atmosphere related to temp/density and/or particles generating some sort of secondary reflection. It might seem like a ghost image on the TVs of old.

Best
JA

[gdkoala]

207683
Although it was a mirror of this and the two crescents were closer together.
I saw it through a window and without and with the naked eye.

[Nikolas]

Atmospheric inversion, was it a warm and humid evening?

[38degsouth]

double-glazed window?