Western North America will have a front-row seat on this Saturday the 4th of April, as the full moon gets painted red in a 10 minutes eclipse.
This weekend's blood moon will be the third of four lunar eclipses, over the course of two years. The pattern won’t repeat for another 20 years or so. The first and second happened in April and September 2014, and the last on September 28, 2015.
The blood moon looks red during a total solar eclipse because the sun's light refracts through Earth's atmosphere and onto the lunar disk. If Earth had no atmosphere, the moon would look black during a total eclipse.
The best place to be is California where observers will see totality at around 5:00 am, but the event will begin much earlier, at about 3 am. Check out the eclipse calculator.
ILLUSTRATION BY SKY & TELESCOPE
My pictures observing the moon eclipse in San Francisco.
