In the early hours on July 5th 2020, there was a “Lunar Eclipse”, but in terms of “visual effects”, you could barely notice it and it was really lame. Pretty much as lame as the entire year of 2020 so far!
In my datebook it stated “Lunar Eclipse at 12:44 am EST”. Well, it did not specify if it was “full” or “partial” or “Penumbral”. This was a “Penumbral Eclipse” which is the fainter and extremely less impressive “visual” because the moon only falls into the secondary shadow of the Earth (which is called the Penumbra.) Basically, all that happened was the moon had a subtle change and just dimmed down slightly. If I wasn’t aware of it being an “eclipse” in my datebook, I would have just assumed that it was just a cool and beautiful full moon, which it was!
A lunar eclipse with the awesome “visual” effects that everyone wants to see will only happen during a “partial” or a “full/total” lunar eclipse.
A “partial” lunar eclipse is when the Earth is just slightly out of alignment with the moon and the sun which will result in only a portion of the moon being covered by the Earth’s shadow. The visual display of this will result in a crescent chunk “cut out” on the moon.
A “full” or “total” lunar eclipse is the most dramatic out of the three. That is when the sun, moon, and Earth are perfectly aligned. The Earth’s shadow will completely cover the moon. This is when the moon travels into the direct shadow of the Earth (which is called the Umbra) from the sun which will cause a shadow to appear on the moon. The moon’s bright surface will completely disappear and light up with a dark brown or reddish-sunset glow. This sometimes can last a few minutes or a few hours depending on the orbits of the moon and the Earth. Then eventually, the Earth’s shadow shifts off the moon and it will be back to normal again.
A “penumbral” lunar eclipse will only cause a slight shadow on the moon because the sun, moon and the Earth are farther out of alignment than a partial eclipse. The sun will only be partially blocked and it will only create no more than a hint of a shadow on the moon’s surface that really won’t make any visual difference.
So while the “eclipse” aspect itself was not the best, the moon was still lovely as always and I was able to get the slightly darker images of it.
