Artifact Or Insight

The almost full moon is very, very bright through a thin layer of broken clouds.

It’s a well known phenomenon to get a 22º circle around the moon when it’s seen through a high layer of ice crystals, but I’m pretty sure the circular rainbows seen in these pictures are something different, even if they might be distantly related.

If that color is more or less true, these are more like rainbows. But I wonder if the effect is real, or an artifact of how the iPhone sensor is trying to record what it sees, and how the iPhone software tries to fiddle with what data gets recorded so that it looks “real.”

Granted, when you look at the moon like this, there appears to be a pale, colored ring. So does the iPhone enhance that to make visible what the human eye can only hint at? Does it give us an insight into the universe around us that our mere human senses can just barely register?

Or are the sensor and software trying to add 2 + 2 and  getting 37 because they’re pre-programmed to expect an answer in the high thirties (-ish)?

Reality is not what it used to be – and this is when I’m 100% cold sober!