Moon Halo Above Arg-e Bam

From the photographer: “In the last days of winter at the same time with Iran’s annual Messier Marathon I was in the Arg-e Bam and captured the 22-degree hallo around the moon, the rising Ursa Major, the Pole star and some parts of Cassiopeia above the ancient World Heritage fortress.”

Arg-e Bam was the largest adobe building in the world, located in Bam, a city in the Kerman Province of southeastern Iran. The origin of this enormous citadel on the Silk Road can be traced back to the Achaemenid period (6th to 4th centuries BC) and even beyond. The heyday of the citadel was from the 7th to 11th centuries, being at the crossroads of important trade routes and known for the production of silk and cotton garments.