The first picture above was taken on 23 December 2007 with a Nikon D70 digital SLR. It's actually a composite (aka cheating ), as the camera couldn't cope with the range of brightnesses. Either the Moon was too bright to show detail (below left), or the halo was too faint to show up (below centre), or neither was exposed properly (below right). In the end I combined two pictures in an attempt to give an impression of how it really appeared.
The "star" at the bottom left is actually Mars. The following evening I spotted a rainbow-coloured halo round the Moon, also known as a moonbow.
The second photograph is of a halo around Mars. I was actually attempting to take a picture of Uranus, (arrowed), but Mars got into the picture too. The "scratch" at the top right is a satellite. It appears as a line because it moved during the exposure.
