Explanation: What are those colorful rings around the Moon? A corona . Rings like this will sometimes appear when the Moon is seen through thin clouds. The effect is created by the diffraction of light around individual, similarly-sized water droplets in an intervening but mostly transparent cloud. Since light of different colors has different wavelengths , each color diffracts differently. Lunar coronae are one of the few color diffraction effects that can be easily seen with the unaided eye. The featured image of a lunar corona was captured around last week's full Super Moon from near Knight's Ferry , California , USA . To the right of the full Moon is the giant orange star Botein . Similar coronae that form around the Sun are typically harder to see because of the Sun's great brightness.