Longest Eclipse and Planets

From the photographer: “Not since 16th September 1997 was I able to see a total Lunar from around my hometown Bursa, Turkey. The previous two visible from around here were the eclipses of June 2011 and September 2015. The weather was bad on both days and I had to go to far distance. Then comes 2018, the year of tropical summer. We frequently had clouds and afternoon thunderstorms with the sky clearing later in the night. The day of the eclipse was the same. The sky cleared enough around sunset after a rainy day. I drove to Uludag National Park, one of my favorite spots. I had a nice view of the eclipse from my mountain, together with the Milky Way, Mars (left, below moon), Saturn (center) and Jupiter (right). This was a relatively dark eclipse as the Moon crossed close to the center of the umbra. My Danjon Scale guess for mid-eclipse is 1.5. It was definitely fainter than Mars, and probably fainter than Jupiter. So magnitude -1.5 is my guess. June 2011 eclipse was considerably darker and September 2015 was somewhat brighter.”

Click the second photo for a stunning close-up view of the mid-total eclipse taken with the photographer’s 8-inch telescope.