unusual moon pillars

[jan lameer]

Jan Lameer, island of Terschelling Netherlands, 53.3N 5.3E
Sunday 31 March 04:30 local (daylight saving) time, 02:30 UT

Hi

I just saw two vertical fairly bright pillars going up and down from the moon.
Height for both pillars was equal, about six moon diameters (3 degrees) or a little more.
Width was about one moon diameter.

I've never seen this one so clear. It took me about five minutes to get my camera out, but then the pillars were nearly gone. I hadn't been out checking cloudcover for aproximately one hour before the sighting.
Conditions here are 4/8 clear with high difuse clouds, wind 1 BF max.

It could have been a nice pic, if I had seen it earlier. Next days I won't go anywhere in the daytime without my camera and wide angle lens.

Greetings, Jan Lameer

[Michael Ellestad]

Hi Jan,

Your are not alone I have had the same thing happen to me as well with halos. I am a halo observor in the U.S. and Use a compact digital for all my halo phototography. Your story with moon pillars sounds cool, I have seen pillars above and below the moon but I have seen soem nice circumscribed halos around the moon. I have a website on the internet but I am reconstructing the halo section of my webpage. The address is:

www.geocities.com/bowlturner/my_weatherpics.html.

Greetings,
Michael