The first half moon of 2026 turned out to be pretty delightful. I happened to catch it in the late afternoon as the sun was going down and the sky was just beginning to darken a bit. It was a pretty clear day, but as I watched it, a very light haze of cloud covered it and that haze created some pretty and interesting visual effects. Those effects were actually more impressive through the camera lens. That was especially true of the little rainbow flare that wasn’t visible at all with the naked eye. It just goes to show that you never know what you might get when photographing the moon.