Joanne Hart, Age 12, Of Williamsport., Pa., For her question:

Is the ring we see actually around the moon?

Our atmosphere reaches up perhaps 1000 miles, and the moon is about 239,000 mues from the earth. The moon is surrounded by empty space, and it has no air of its own. But we see it through the earths atmosphere, which is often misty with clouds.

Somtimes a haze of miniatute ice crystals hovers high in the air. It may be too thin to notice or thick enough to cast a milky film over the sky. The ice fragments bend or refract moonbeams as they plunge down through the air. The refracted light forms a circle around the moon. The icy haze in our atmosphere may paint two pale halos around the moon, one outside the other.