Water droplets or ice crystals
high in the atmosphere can
combine with moonlight and
surround the moon with a
colorful arc called a corona.
Here, in addition to faint light
from the aurora borealis and
some moonlit clouds, two coronae
fragments appear east of the
waxing gibbous moon in the
frigid sky over Fairbanks,
Alaska on the morning of March
14, 2003. The two stars to
the moon's upper right are
Pollux and Castor; to its left
is the bright planet Jupiter. |