While travelling north from Woodville last week, this unusual sight of a full moon surrounded by coloured rings caused me to stop and snap a picture.
Was it a penumbra or just an illusion? Google defines a penumbra in three ways:
- a space of partial illumination (as in an eclipse) between the perfect shadow on all sides and the full light;
- a shaded region surrounding the dark central portion of a sunspot; and
- a surrounding or adjoining region in which something exists in a lesser degree: fringe.
It could have been any one of these or something else, but the distinctive colours I have never seen before. It lasted an hour before a cloud layer obscured the phenomenon.
Curiously, a resident in Melbourne shared a similar but more-orange lunar phenomenon low on the horizon the same night.
