Coming home after a long pointless walk, I noticed a large circular phenomenon in the sky..

I think it’s an ice halo. I hear these occasionally happen around here in the Pacific Northwest, then dissipate quickly. I wasted no time, and took this shot with my tablet thing. I tried to get to the waterfront for a better, more open shot. But soon, it was gone (about 15 min later).

Here’s a bit more from Wikipedia on ice halos, because Im not going to pretend I really know this stuff..

“Among the most well known halos is the 22° halo, often just called “halo”, which appears as a large ring around the Sun or Moon with a radius of about 22° (roughly the width of an outstretched hand at arm’s length). The ice crystals that cause the 22° halo are oriented semi-randomly in the atmosphere, in contrast to the horizontal orientation required for some other halos such as sun dogs and light pillars. As a result of the optical properties of the ice crystals involved, no light is reflected towards the inside of the ring, leaving the sky noticeably darker than the sky around it, and giving it the impression of a “hole in the sky”.[2] The 22° halo is not to be confused with the corona, which is a different optical phenomenon caused by water droplets rather than ice crystals, and which has the appearance of a multicolored disk rather than a ring.”

– Orion T