The moon in colors

I know there is a phenomenon when it's cloudy weather to see the glow of color radiating out from the moon.


But what is this phenomenon? I see Red and Blue on the surface of the moon so I took some pictures.



Anyone know what causes this? Wouldn't the moon need an atmosphere to have the colors of light separate like that and cling against the surface?

I found this on a physics forum...

It's the same basic phenomenom that causes a rainbow. Water droplets (or possibly ice crystals) in the atmosphere refract the light from the moon, and since the index of refraction is a function of wavelength, different frequencies get refracted by a different amounts, so the white light from the moon gets split into colors.

LOVEEEEEEEE Amateur Photos =)

Im no expert so I checked google and found this article:
www.universetoday.com...

Thank you for your replies. The above link shows the moon in all red but what I viewed last night was very different. The moon looks completely normal but that strange looking atmospheric haze in blue and red is what I've never seen before. (Maybe I have just not payed attention to it)

Originally posted by JibbyJedi
I found this on a physics forum...

It's the same basic phenomenom that causes a rainbow. Water droplets (or possibly ice crystals) in the atmosphere refract the light from the moon, and since the index of refraction is a function of wavelength, different frequencies get refracted by a different amounts, so the white light from the moon gets split into colors.

So if we left Earth's atmosphere the colors would dissipate? I'm guessing this is commonplace but to me it looked like the moon had atmosphere.

reply to post by libertytoall


All I know for sure is that our moon shouldn't be there. It's not even from this solar system from what I've read about the dust samples taken. NASA now says there is water on the moon, when in direct sunlight, that may create clouds or an appearance of an atmosphere. The color of the moon is greatly skewed by our atmosphere and not really yellow and grey.

Its an atmospheric phenomena, and product of focus, and yes I'll say it, lens flair. I'll be home in a few and post a photo I took that shows both an atmospheric 'moonbow' and a green lens flair, could catch one off guard thinking they shot something they didn't notice looking. Keep in mind a typical moon photo is going through at least 6-8 glass surfaces.

Chromatic aberration

In optics, chromatic aberration (CA, also called achromatism or chromatic distortion) is a type of distortion in which there is a failure of a lens to focus all colors to the same convergence point.
It occurs because lenses have a different refractive index for different wavelengths of light (the dispersion of the lens). The refractive index decreases with increasing wavelength.
Chromatic aberration manifests itself as "fringes" of color along boundaries that separate dark and bright parts of the image, because each color in the optical spectrum cannot be focused at a single common point.
Since the focal length f of a lens is dependent on the refractive index n, different wavelengths of light will be focused on different positions.




source

Beautiful. It must be a gorgeous sight!

Chromatic Aberration is the perfect explanation for what I believe is in your photographs. For whatever it's worth, I uploaded two gifs made from 3 exposures, the second one are longer exposures and are more blurred but have a more pronounced green lens flair. It was a faint moon halo and I see bigger and clearer ones, from atmospheric moisture. Anyway, I didn't plan on shooting these and the lenses could have been cleaner. These are cropped and scaled down, centered on the moon, not the camera. Note how streaked the stars are, and just how fast things move in the sky, why focus is blurred.

The moon doesn't need an atmospere for this effect to occur because WE have one that works just fine.
different temperature variations and even variations in the chemical make up of our atmosphere can filter and defract light. This how blue moons, blood moons and other various optical abberations occur, including the twinkling of stars.

reply to post by Fiberx


Well at least I meant the earth's atmosphere. It's why there are no good restaurants on the moon, good food, but no atmosphere.

that's most likely what it is. Thanks for the feedback.