Eerie Winter Halo Shines Over Twin Falls Sunday Evening
This was a pretty cool sight in the sky that happened last night, and I would have missed it if my kids had been good kids and gone to bed when they were supposed to. Around 11pm, my youngest two kids went outside because they are kids and weird. A moment later they cam running inside saying that I had to look outside at the moon because it had a huge ring around it. Two thoughts went through my head: they were trying to make a joke about the moon having rings like Jupiter or some other joke about rings. I was wrong and there was indeed a giant ring around the moon. I didn't see it at first because my eyes needed to adjust to the dark, but once I saw it it was definitely there. I had to look it up online to see if it was an apocalyptic sign or just some thing cool with light refraction through the icy winter air. Online searches proved it to be the latter, but didn't not say it could also be the first option.
I tried to take pictures and video but my phone camera was unable to get the ring to show up. There are many pictures though available online since the exciting lunar vision we saw is actually a pretty common occurrence, especially in the winter months. You may even be able to see it again tonight. It has a few names including Moon Rings, Winter Halo, and 22° Halo according to Wikipedia.
The Winter Halo is different than the Sun Dog or Snow Rainbow we saw in Idaho in late 2019.