June 21, 2020 Annular Solar Eclipse (A Correction)

Hey everyone,

And here it seems I have to apologize and make a correction.

If you remember the post I did the other day about June’s Primary Moon phases, I said there wasn’t a lot happening with Moon this month. But, I messed up. That is totally not true. I was reading from the small and messy, list of space events that I keep, and somehow I missed that there was a penumbral lunar eclipse during this past week’s full Moon, and also that there is also an annular solar eclipse coming up later this month. See? I told you I shouldn’t have posted it.

Let’s talk about these for a minute.

June 21, 2020 – Annular Solar Eclipse

As you probably remember, a solar eclipse is what happens when the Moon (always during its new phase) passes between the Sun and someone watching here on Earth, and blocks some amount of the Sun out. Thanks to a really fantastic coincidence, the Moon and Sun both look to be about the same size as seen from Earth. So, sometimes, the Moon blocks all of the Sun. We call this a total solar eclipse.

Not all solar eclipses are total, though. The Moon’s orbit isn’t round. It’s stretched out a bit; an ellipse. So, sometimes, the Moon is farther from Earth than than at others. You know that whole supermoon/micromoon business that everyone either loves or hates? Here’s a place where this all comes in handy. An annular eclipse happens when the Moon is farther from the Earth than it is at other times, and is only able to block out most of the Sun, but not all of it, even if it cuts dead straight across the Sun’s middle. When this happens, what we’re left with is a thin ring of the Sun, circling around the dark near side of the Moon The word annular means ring-shaped because of that. Here’s what one looks like.

By Smrgeog – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

This eclipse will cover a big chunk of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, but won’t be visible in most Europe or the Americas.

Animation of the path of the June 21, 2020 Annular Solar Eclipse (A.T. Sinclair – http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/), via Wikipeida (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_June_21,_2020)

Penunumbral Lunar Eclipse – June 5, 2020

On the other hand, when Earth gets between the Sun and the full Moon, always full, and casts a shadow onto the Moon, we get what’s called a Lunar eclipse. When most of us think of these, we think of those deep red “blood” Moons. This one won’t be like that. Instead of passing through the dark part of Earth’s shadow, the umbra, the Moon will only pass through the thin, outer penumbra. Eclipses like these are usually tough to see because the Moon only darkens a little. I kind of think it looks like it’s behind some thin clouds. I usually don’t like to write about these much because, again, I don’t want to wind up being the one who causes people to look up, then look away disappointed, and never look again. Still, it’s neat to know they’re going on and neat to know that the universe is always doing its thing, whether we can see it or not.

This eclipse is over, but there’ll be another one in July. I’ll make sure I mention it.

I make mistakes all the time, and usually just correct the post. These are pretty big ones, though; pretty big things to not even admit were going on. So, sorry for letting you down, and for better or worse, you get this extra post out of the deal.

In my defense, it’s really hard to write about the skies all over the world at the same time everywhere. So, typically I just write about what I’m looking for in my own skies, and both of these weren’t visible here in the states, but this is a time when that doesn’t really work. The solar eclipse, at least, was big enough for me to have said something about.

We’ll get ’em next time, Tiger.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you’re all handling everything okay. Clear skies, everyone.