Moonbows?

Hi to all. I have absolutely no knowledge of the skies, but wanted to share / ask questions about a night time phenomenon I saw last night (Wednesday 3rd January) near Gorey town in County Wexford.

I was driving home along a narrow country road about 7.30pm (approx) and my eye caught what looked like a faint night rainbow - something I had never seen or heard of before. In retrospect I realise I should have stopped the car and taken a proper look, but it was raining and as I was very close to my home I thought the bow would be visible from my house - but it wasn't. My family didn't believe me, but after an online search I realise that moon rainbows do exist. My question to all you guys is this: Were my eyes deceiving me or could I indeed have seen a moon-bow?

Thanks!

Stephen.

Could you have seen a moon bow, absolutely! Sure, they are quite rare but they most certainly do exist. To help confirm the sighting can I just ask something, did this moon-bow literally look alike a rainbow at night or was it a much smaller circle around the moon itself? The reason I ask is that halos around the moon are much more common than moon bows.

A great site to get details on these kinds of things is www.atoptics.co.uk/

In particular the following pages are relevant here:
www.atoptics.co.uk/rainbows/moonbow.htm
www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/circmoon.htm

Welcome to the boards!

Bart.

Thanks Bart.

I was driving in a more-or-less south-easterly direction with the moon to my left side and the bow to my right. It was a faint white-ish bow although I thought I caught some colour in it, but nothing at all like a day time rainbow.

I'll take a look at the link...

Thanks Bart.

I was driving in a more-or-less south-easterly direction with the moon to my left side and the bow to my right. It was a faint white-ish bow although I thought I caught some colour in it, but nothing at all like a day time rainbow.

I'll take a look at the link...

OK, if it was one each side of the car then definitely a moon bow and not a halo. At night your eyes are very bad at seeing color, particularly from faint objects so white-ish sounds bang on too. It's be 95% certain you saw a moon bow from what you've told us.

Bart.

Astronomical Picture of the Day offers the following shot and explanation:

antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010704.html

There was an even better shot recently on one of the ATM mailing lists taken by an amateur which was beautiful... but I can't find it now!

Haven't seen one myself, yet,

Phil.

I was leafing through a mag in Eason's last weekend and there was a spectacular moonbow image.

The mag was either Sky and Telescope or Astronomy - 'Beautiful Universe' - the moonbow was in the annual astrophotography competition.

Dave