from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A bright spot on a lunar halo, produced by refraction through a preponderating number of ice-crystals floating perpendicularly or vertically; a mock moon.
This morning it was calm and clear save for a light misty veil of ice crystals through which the moon shone with scarce clouded brilliancy, surrounded with bright cruciform halo and white paraselene.
A perfect paraselene is, I am convinced, an extremely rare thing, much rarer than a perfect parhelion (‘moon-cats’ my companion thought the phenomenon should be called, saving the canine simile for the sun), for in seven years' travel I have never seen another, and the references to it in literature are few.
Of such are the records of auroral displays, parhelions, paraselene, lunar halos, fog bows, irridescent clouds, refracted images of mountains and mirage generally.
This word comes from the Greek ‘para,’ beside, near, plus ‘selene,’ moon.