Avon Lake's Harvest Moon Came Up Wearing Rings of Colour

The Harvest Moon is the full moon that lands nearest the September equinox, and its whole reputation rests on a technicality of geometry: it rises only a little later each evening instead of the usual hour or so. Several nights running, the moon is up before the light is gone. That is why it carries a farming name. It is the moon people got the crop in under, back when the alternative was working blind.

It came full on the night of 26 September 2026. We went down to the lake to watch it, and got something we were not expecting.

Avon Lake, Ohio — the night the moon had rainbows around it

We were standing at Veterans Memorial Park in Avon Lake, on the Lake Erie shore just west of Cleveland. The forecast said cloud, which usually means go home. Instead the cloud cover came in exactly thin enough — a high, even veil, the kind made of ice crystals and fine water droplets rather than anything solid.

Moonlight going through a veil like that does not simply dim. It diffracts. The light bends around each droplet and comes out the other side sorted by wavelength, which puts coloured rings around the moon in concentric bands. Astronomers call it a lunar corona. Standing under it, what you see is the moon sitting in the middle of a bullseye of soft rainbows, and because the cloud is moving, the rings breathe and shift while you watch. It stopped looking like the sky over Ohio. It looked like a view from somewhere else in the solar system entirely.

The photograph came out sharp enough to use, so we built it into a patch and put it on a cap: the Aluminum Harvest Moon Trucker Hat. The image sits inside a round black anodized aluminum bezel, full colour, with the coordinates of the spot we shot from lettered around the lower rim — 41°30.822'N 82°01.176'W. Those numbers are not decoration. Put them into a map and you get the patch of grass we were standing on.

It comes on the Richardson 112 in five colorways, plus a Dusty Rose ponytail cap for anyone who needs the opening. Each one is made to order in Avon Lake.

Shop the Aluminum Harvest Moon Trucker Hat →

Worth stepping outside for

A corona needs the cloud to be thin and uniform, which is why you can watch a hundred full moons and never catch one. The Harvest Moon stays close to full for a couple of nights either side, so it is worth looking up again before the week is out — and worth going anyway, because the version of this that matters is the one you saw yourself.

The one we saw is on the Aluminum Harvest Moon Trucker Hat, coordinates and all.