Have you been watching the moon recently? We’ve had a pretty great week of moon watching here in Austin. The moon was full on the 9th (to learn more about Moon Phases, check out this previous post that includes a printable moon phase game!). Last night, the moon appeared round, and red as we watched it from our driveway. This past weekend, we noticed that there was a ring around the moon – then today, we heard on the news that tonight’s weather conditions were good for another visible moon ring occurring.

You can think of the ring around the moon like the Moon’s version of a rainbow. Rainbows appear when rays of sunlight are bent by water droplets in the Earth’s lower atmosphere (that’s why we see rainbows when it’s bright and wet). Rings around the moon are caused by rays of moonlight passing through clouds and ice crystals high up in the Earth’s atmosphere. You can learn a little more about Moon Rings over at Universe Today.

Hopefully it won’t be too cloudy out tonight to see the moon! The moon is supposed to rise tonight at 9:36pm – make sure to bundle up, it’s going to be cold! Leave us a comment with any moon observations.

A particularly impressive Moon Ring.