Eclipse, not — Conjunction, hot! | CAA: Cuyahoga Astronomical Association

See the eclipse? Not sure we can either. Side-by-side images made about half an hour apart, shot and processed with identical settings.

Penumbral lunar eclipses — when the Moon passes through the thin outer shadow Earth casts into space — are not spectacular. We described the July 4 – 5, 2020 eclipse as “subtle” when we wrote about it in advance. It turned out to be not-even-subtle. Essentially nobody could tell whether an eclipse had even happened, even in photographs tortured to bring out shadow details. Announcing penumbral eclipses is tricky: if nothing is said about them before they happen, we get asked why; if we promote the eclipse and even say it may be slight, people get disappointed when they hardly see the effects or don’t see anything happen at all. Still, we got to talk about the geometry of eclipses and people looked at our beautiful Moon, and that’s something.

A gorgeous high resolution portrait of Earth’s Moon at the height of the penumbral eclipse of July 4 – 5, 2020. Can’t see the eclipse shadow? Nope. That’s okay with the photographer. Credit: Alan Studt.

CAA member and accomplished photographer Alan Studt took advantage of the brilliant Moon to make its portrait. Studt explained this photo of the Moon is a composite, made up of images recorded at the peak of the eclipse. “Never saw a shadow,” he wrote, “which was fine with me.”

The Moon was shot with a telescope focal length of 4,400mm, at f/20, 1/80th sec., and ISO 250. It is made of 12 images (4 rows of 3 images)

stitched together in Lightroom and post-processed using Camera RAW in Photoshop.

Happily for skywatchers, the July Fourth holiday weekend presented a second opportunity for enjoyment: the conjunction of the “Full Buck Moon,” with planets Jupiter and Saturn. Clouds interfered, or possibly enhanced, photographic efforts. By eye, the trio was glorious with the dominant Moon, brilliant Jupiter, and shy Saturn gracing a sky full of moonglow.

Shot about an hour after moonrise, the Full Moon glowed brilliantly orange, lending color to the encroaching clouds. Jupiter is above Moon in this photo, Saturn is at the edge of a cloud on the left. A single DSLR exposure. Photo by James Guilford.

Alan Studt made his picture from two different shots/exposures: One shot for the clouds & one shot for the Moon. The clouds, Saturn, Jupiter and its moons (look closely at Jupiter) were all in one shot, 180mm, f/5. Just the Moon & clouds shot were 550mm, f6.3 Sky: 1/13th sec., ISO 5000. Moon: 1/125th sec., ISO 80. The images were post-processed in Lightroom & layer blended in Photoshop.