There was much ballyhoo surrounding the penumbral lunar eclipse that would take place the night of July 4 – 5, 2020. We joined in just to explain a little about what was going on and what might be expected. Penumbral lunar eclipses take place when the Moon passes through the thin outer shadow Earth casts out into space; they are often very subtle, slight, and in this case, nearly undetectable. Just witness the photo above that shows the Full Buck Moon about one-half hour before maximum eclipse and the Moon at maximum. Casual observers saw no change across the entire event and it’s hard for us to see the difference even in photos that can be made to emphasize features! So we apologize if you waited up to see what we called the “subtle” eclipse but, if you did, you saw a beautiful Full Moon!
Then there was the much-less-promoted Sunday night, July 5, conjunction of Earth’s Moon, with planets Jupiter and Saturn… a lovely sight! We went out to photograph it an hour after moonrise and spied a brilliant orange Moon lighting up the scattered clouds with Jupiter shining through and Saturn making a somewhat dimmer appearance. A conjunction is when two or more celestial objects appear close together in our skies — emphasis on appear since Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn are separated by hundreds of millions of miles. We were surprised to see, in the photo below, that even Jupiter’s four Galilean Moons can be seen. The stars and planets appear oblong or as short streaks due to Earth’s rotation and the length of the camera exposure.
Stephens Memorial Observatory 