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Meiying Lee
Taipei, Taiwan
09/27/2023
06:09 pm

Equipment Details:

Canon R7 + SIGMA 60-600mm F4.5-6.3 S DG OS HSM Sports
Canon 6D + TAMRON 70-300mm Lens

Post-processing Details:

Use PowerPoint to adjust the focal lengths of the three photos to be consistent and compare them together.

Image Details:

Today, in the evening, I noticed that as an aircraft contrail drifted upwards toward the position of the moon, a lunar corona immediately formed around the moon. I observed that the size of this lunar corona (leftmost image) was much smaller in radius compared to the common lunar coronas I've seen before. After about fifteen minutes, I observed the moon forming a lunar corona (middle image) again, and this time, the corona's radius was even smaller. When I located a previously taken photo of a lunar corona (rightmost image) and adjusted it to the same focal length, I noticed that the lunar corona formed by common cloud had a much larger radius!
When moonlight passes through tiny water droplets in thin clouds, it forms a lunar corona due to the phenomenon of diffraction. The larger the water droplet, the smaller the radius of the corona. The water droplets in contrail tails are larger than those in common cloud, which is why they formed a lunar corona with smaller radius. Witnessing a lunar corona formed by a contrail is truly a rare experience.