We received a lot of pictures from this beautiful natural phenomenon. “Our inbox is also completely full,” says meteorologist Brian Verhoeven of Buienradar. “The halo is also called ‘small circle’ in the Netherlands. A wide ring around the sun or the moon,” he explains.
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It is impossible to predict when we will be able to see the phenomenon. It is a special combination of circumstances. “It’s an optical phenomenon. We owed it yesterday to a layer of thin cloud, called cirrostratus, which hung at a height of about 8 kilometers.”
At that height it is well below freezing point (-20 to -60), so the cloud cover consists of a layer of ice crystals. “The light from the sun that reflects off the moon is refracted in those ice crystals at an angle of 22 degrees,” says Verhoeven. “And then you see a circle around the moon.”
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The natural phenomenon could be seen throughout the Netherlands.
The halo is a phenomenon that in principle could occur all year round. “It is not typical for this time of year. But the requirement is that there is a warm front in the area. And so you need those thin, high clouds. And that does not happen every day.”
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