July 2, 2020
Full Buck Moon Waxing with company of Jupiter, Saturn
Officially full July 5, 2020 12:44 AM EDT
When the new antlers of buck deer push out from their foreheads in coatings of velvety fur. It was also often called the Full Thunder Moon, thunderstorms being now most frequent. Sometimes this is also called the Full Hay Moon.
"Hey, Pardner,"
First thing I do as I walk out the door, hail Jupiter in the southern sky. Stunningly brilliant. Right up there in lights from about half hour before midnight until dawn. The latest, well, earliest, time I've seen its headlight in the sky was about 3 AM on a really really late ramble. We've become walking buddies, chat about our neighborhoods, how his neighbor Saturn, dimly visible nearby, is doing, and ask what the old boy thinks about the goings on down here.
We're an unlikely duo, me at moving along at three miles and hour and my pal orbiting the earth at around 29,236 miles per hour. He's the only one looking over my shoulder every night. I miss him when he's taken a powder behind cloud banks. Before March, business as usual down here meant that there was a cataract of pollution dimming the view of him and his neighborhood.
I'll bet I'm looking at Jupiter and Company in the same deep blue, see-through dome overhead as George Washington and George Washington Carver viewed it back in their day
I need company these days. Round midnight, Jupiter's out there waiting for me.
Tonight, he's sharing the stage with a waxing Full Buck Moon and Saturn, farther away, smaller, dimmer. He doesn't mind sharing the stage. He has about 21 of the 30 days of the week all to himself. And all of them with me, one of his biggest boosters on this planet.
Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
Full Buck Moon July 2, 2020
Splendid Jupiter, Saturn to the left, dimmer, way more distant, a treat when not obscured by cloud banks.
Comments