By 12:09 p.m. EST, the full Moon was already 100 per cent in illumination, though to most observers it reserved its most spectacular effect until moonrise, when a brilliant, low Moon emerged out of twilight and appeared to distend the horizon.
That horizon elevation was important, since there was an additional depth in the picture: overhead was Jupiter, and below him, the brightest star of Leo, which is Regulus. The coupleing resembled a well-acted diagram of the ecliptic at work the Moon moving along the same sky-road with which the Sun and planets move.
The traditional name of the full Moon in February is “Snow Moon,” a title that makes the observation of the sky look like it has a sharp border to the season. The name came with an unpleasant precision to areas of the Midwest and Northeast this year, as a weekend storm caused dangerous temperatures of cold and heavy snowfall, with rare arctic outbreaks affecting the state conditions as far as Florida of the space coast. The moon above may have a peaceful appearance and the air below the moon may not always co-operate.
Regulus is not just a fair star in a gibbous Moon. The star is only 79 light-years distant and it is blue-white in fact hotter-coloured than the Sun–the heart of Leo in a figure called the Sickle. It is more, too, among the small number of bright stars, which are sufficiently near the ecliptic, so that the Moon frequently passes in front of them, and the backdrop of the constellations becomes almost mechanical: every month the repetitions of the arc of the Moon, but never exactly as seen at a given point on the surface of the Earth. It is precisely that slight variation of the viewpoint that makes the night after the Snow Moon more memorable than the full Moon itself.
Several skywatchers in the eastern North American region are perfectly placed to observe a lunar occultation on February 2, 2020: The Moon temporarily shades Regulus, making it appear as if it has gone out. The disappearance-and-return window ranges between 8:40 to 10:05 p.m. EST (or eastern Canada). The scene itself is aesthetically stripped, no special filters, no elaborate setting, but it taking a graceful slide across deep space, one that shows us that the Moon is not a lamp that just changes phases, but a rapidly moving world, one that glides its edge over deep space.
Hence February is a chain of coincidences and shades. Evening skies when the Moon is a waning moon can have a loose planet parade with bright planets being clustered to the west following sunset. Then at new phase on February 17, the Moon becomes invisible and the geometry of the Moon and the Sun favors an annular solar eclipse, which can be seen on a distant path through Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, with the entire Sun appearing as a thin ring at most not more than 2 minutes 20 seconds.
March picks up the shadow theme moving in the contrary direction. On March 3, a total lunar eclipse puts the full Moon under a coppery colour 58 minutes, which will be most visible to the western part of North America. It is a common phenomenon the shadow of the Earth on the Moon – yet no view is ever exactly the same, as the area to see the eclipse changes with the rotation of the Earth around the Earth.
Soon operating side by side with these sky activities is another moon thread: the technology getting ready to take humans round the Moon once more. The timeline of Artemis II will depend on the results of the tests and the weather and NASA has set the date of the tanking of the next wet dress rehearsal of Artemis II as the 2nd of the month of February, an all up countdown-and-fueling exercise to simulate the day of launch. Engineers have maintained Orion energized and heated in the cold wave, a fact that reminds of the reality that “going to the Moon” is not only work of rockets and trajectories, but also control of temperatures, winds, and schedules.
To the watcher, the lesson lies not in a list of dates, but in a feeling of continuity: a flashing Moon rising next to Regulus, a twinkling star vanishing behind a shifting lunar edge, the sunlight either narrowed of an Antarctic ring, and–here on the earth–systems drilled such that, given the right circumstances, the human eye can once again see the earth beyond the Moon.
