Skywatchers will see the moon turn blood red on Saturday, April 4, 2015. The event known as the lunar eclipse, is a rare occurrence in which planet Earth casts its shadow on the Moon. The first of two lunar eclipses this year. Saturday’s spectacle will begin at 4:58 a.m. in the West and at 6:15 a.m. in the East.
It will be visible in the sky for most, but viewers have the option of choosing from several websites to watch the event. Three websites are the Griffith Observatory starts at 5 a.m., Slooh Community Observatory starts at 6 a.m. These websites will livestream the lunar eclipse.
The shadow starts creeping past the moon a 3:15 a.m., but totality begins at 5 a.m. Totality lasts about five minutes. Saturday’s lunar eclipse will be visible in China, Russia, South America and India. Inhabitants of Europe, Iceland, Greenland and Africa will have to watch the event unfold through the internet.
Lunar eclipses occur bi-yearly. It is the opposite of a solar eclipse, in which the Moon gets between the Sun and the Earth. Saturday's eclipse is the third of a four-eclipse cycle called the tetrad. The first of the series occurred on April 15, 2014, the second was on Oct. 8, 2014, and the final one will be on Sept. 28, 2015.
Earth’s shadow blocks direct sunlight which gives the Moon a red hue. The first recorded lunar eclipse occurred on 747 BCE, scholars refer to it as the Babylonian Eclipse. The word eclipse is a Greek word which means “the darkening of a heavenly body.”
