during the total eclipse today, I witnessed a ring of light in the atmosphere (NOT the ring around the moon, totally separate, present for just a few seconds) – what is that and what makes it happen?

Question

It was so cool.

In: Planetary Science

Answer 1

You are referring to the 360 dawn effect on the horizon around you? That’s because outside of the shadow the sun is hitting the earth and your inside the shadow (as you would be during the sunrise, but the sun in this case is already risen) that “dawn’s” edge is literally the circle edge of the giant shadow moving across the land

Answer 2

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Answer 3

There’s a number of different things that can cause this. Hopefully this wikipedia article helps:

http://wikipedia.org/wiki/46°_halo

EDIT: more general article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_(optical_phenomenon)