2014-09-23 - Hawaii Kai, HI - Other

White moving halo

While on vacation in Hawaii I witnessed something at my girlfriend’s house that I cannot explain. On 23 September at around 430 am my girlfriend woke me up to look at something outside her window. I got up and looked out expecting to see an animal and was surprised to see a white dome shaped half sphere to the Northeast protruding up from behind a ridgeline over the ocean. She said she had been watching it for a few minutes already thinking that her eyes were playing tricks on her. The dome was about the size of a saucer held at arm’s length in the sky. It appeared to be a moon halo, however there was no moon that morning since it was a new moon. It was a very bright white ring that was very pronounced. It appeared stationary but then I realized it was moving in the direction of her house on Mariner’s Ridge in Hawaii Kai from the northeast to the southwest. It appeared to be moving the same speed as the few clouds that were in the sky so I thought maybe it w! as some kind of weird reflection from the small clouds. When it got closer I realized it was a perfect circle and was very large. I would say it appeared to cover half the distance of the sky. There was no noise and I didn’t see any light source that could create a halo like that. It was generally clear except for a few small clouds, so it wasn’t something reflecting off of the ground onto clouds or anything like that. We watched it for about 5 minutes until it went over the house. We have no idea what it was and the best way to describe it was a very pronounced large white moon halo, minus the moon and moving at about 10 miles an hour.