How to View Tuesday’s Eerie Election Day Blood Moon

The moon, the Earth and the sun will align in the early hours of Tuesday, offering the last total lunar eclipse, or blood moon, for the next three years, according to astronomers. West Coast residents will get the best view when the red moon enters totality—as in, fully enters our planet’s shadow and emanates a deep crimson—from around 2:16 a.m. and lasting around 90 minutes. On the East Coast, the moon will turn red around 5:16 a.m. until 6:41 a.m. NASA’s visibility map has all the details, and viewer are safe to watch it without eye coverings.

The anomaly of the blood moon occurs when the sun’s typical reflection off the moon—causing moonlight—ebbs. This allows only the edges of the sun’s reach on Earth, the corners of the planet that are experiencing sunrise and sunset, to make it to the moon. “The romantic way to look at it is that it’s kind of like seeing all the sunsets and sunrises on the Earth at one time,” Bruce Betts, the chief scientist at the Planetary Society, told The New York Times. Read more at The New York Times.