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Double Moon Mirage?


GinaLynn

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Are you able to find out if he recognized which one was the real one, and where the different horizons were in relation to each other?

I forgot to mention that double suns and moons are also more common in ice and snow country, like Alaska. Where it is typically ice crystals in the atmosphere, as in a sun dog.

Yes he new which was the real one and watched its twin traverssing the sky in the other direction. To be honest I didnt know what to think about it, just a story told to a nephew by his uncle about what he saw one night, so he therefore watched it for sometime. He was a very experienced bushman and has passed on some time ago now, and i am suprised to find there are other witnesses to what sounds like a similar phenomena.

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Here is another phenomenon called a Moon dog.

http://atoptics.co.uk/halo/parmoon.htm

I don't think any of the ghost moons in the photos are moon dogs. The descriptions of the sightings in this thread also suggest that people did not see moon dogs.

Some really fine examples, Stereo,

which may also explain the drifting of the artificial moon, in the same way that a halo can develop and expand considerably in a relatively short time, which I have witnessed.

The expanding halo, I saw was simply due an overcast type cloud or mist gradually covering the moon, causing the halo to double its size in about 15 minutes.

We can see by the pics that the moon dog is the same distance from the object as the halo is or would be.

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The Moon dog, like Sun dog is often 22 degrees. There is a discussion under Sun dog about the angular distance being something other than 22 degrees at times. The 22 degree angle is a minimum.

http://atoptics.co.uk/halo/dogfm.htm

I've seen the "Sun" rise over the horizon followed by the actual sunrise. I've never found a good explanation for my observation. I have read about a process called optical piping that is responsible for showing city lights appearing above the horizon. Maybe that is what I observed.

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  • 1 year later...

I also saw the double moon tonight, it's Jan 2 2017, wasilla AK, very clear and cold, about 7 degrees F. Time was 1645. The sun had set and it was in a blue twilight sky. The entire moon was not double, just the bottom half of the thin crescent seemed to almost have a shadow behind it. The double moon crescent tail appeared as a faded version of the brighter moon. If I squinted and stared it would become one for a moment, then return to being double.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Pretty sure it was either a mirage or an atmospheric reflection. As a kid, i once saw two moons at night, one more ethereal-looking than the other. It freaked me out back then.

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  • 1 month later...

I have been looking for someone who saw the same things as I did for years please reply me, the other moon, it happened to me twice

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  • 6 months later...

I have also had the double moon "mirage" experience and there were a lot of witnesses as it occurred on a university campus! My story follows:

It was early morning, about 8 AM just before sunrise when I saw two moons in the sky.  Typical fall morning (November?) in the late 1960s when I was a student at the University of Calgary. I recall there was a little snow and ice on the ground when I was walking across campus.  I looked up to see the moon in north.  I was a little surprised because I usually thought it was in the west. I turned and was shocked to see the same moon there too!  Both moons were near full phase and about ten degrees above the horizon. Identical in all respects, one not paler than the other, same size and white color  Steady image not shimmering or wavy.  The sun was just coming up in the east at the time.

 I drew this unusual phenomenon to the attention  of several students, but no one had a clue as to what was going on.  Calgary does experience strong atmospheric inversions during chinook wind conditions. A very fast moving warm air layer can lie above a cold air layer until they mix and the temperature can rise as much as 40C.  But how could this produce a perfect lunar mirage about 90 degrees to each other on the horizon?

Also I have since learned that the two moon "mirage" may be rare but it is not something new. Apparently two moons were seen in the sky before a battle the Romans fought 2,000 years ago. So there is nothing new under the sun …. Or moons???

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I have not had this experience before, but someone in my family did. And it was here in Connecticut. I was told, when this person was coming back to campus of the college they were attending, and it was night, she saw something like an light orange moon, and then looked over to another direction of the sky, and saw a more whole white moon, and then when turning back to the original one, it was gone. She said, it was really bizarre to see. 

I have tried to find anything similar, researching on the net, and have come up with nothing. This thread is the first, where I have read about similar experiences. I am familiar with sun dogs, and have even taken photos of them. I have seen similar likenesses in the moon, but what my family member saw and described to me, sounds similar to what Lilly posted. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a mirage or something close to that. 

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