Tomorrow Brings a Pair of Rare Sky Events—A Total Solar Eclipse and a Selenelion

Skywatchers, mark your calendars. On Tuesday, you'll get the chance to see a rare astronomical event.

A total lunar eclipse will occur on March 3 and will be visible across North America, the Pacific, Australia, and East Asia.

Lunar eclipses happen when the moon is on the opposite side of the sun to Earth—what you're actually seeing is Earth's shadow cast onto the surface of the moon. When the Earth's shadow hits just a portion of the moon, a partial lunar eclipse occurs. When our planet's shadow covers the moon entirely, it's a total lunar eclipse.

The moon's orbit around Earth is tilted relative to Earth's orbit around the sun. This tilt is the reason why we have occasional eclipses instead of one every month.

March's full moon is known as the Worm Moon; Native Americans referred to the last full moon of winter by this name because it's when the worm trails would appear in the newly thawed ground, according to the Royal Museums Greenwich.

But because the moon appears to turn a dark, rusty red color during a total lunar eclipse, this month's full moon is also called a "blood moon." This is the result of sunlight passing through Earth's atmosphere and becoming refracted, NASA explains. Colors with shorter wavelengths, like blue and purple, scatter more easily than colors with longer wavelengths, like red and orange. Because these longer wavelengths make it through Earth’s atmosphere, and the shorter wavelengths have scattered away, the moon looks orange or red during a lunar eclipse.

Unlike a solar eclipse, there's no danger in viewing a lunar eclipse with the naked eye. In the U.S., you can spot the lunar eclipse in the early morning hours of March 3. Earth's shadow will begin to creep across the moon starting at 4:50 a.m. EST. Totality begins at 6:04 a.m. EST, with 6:33 a.m. EST being the best time to see the blood moon. Starting at 7:02 a.m. EST, Earth's shadow will start to leave the surface of the moon.

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For most cities on the East Coast, Tuesday morning's sunrise happens at around 6:25 a.m. or 6:30 a.m. Since the totality phase of the eclipse will last until 7:02 a.m., those on the East Coast will experience a selenelion, a rare astronomical event that occurs when both the sun and the eclipsed moon are simultaneously visible.

During a lunar eclipse, the sun, Earth, and moon are in a geometrically straight line in space. So, if the sun is above the horizon, the moon must be below the horizon and completely out of sight (or vice versa), according to Space.com. But thanks to atmospheric refraction (which causes objects to appear higher in the sky than they really are), a selenelion is possible.

There will be a short window of roughly one to three minutes (depending on your location) when you may simultaneously spot the sun rising in the east-southeast and the eclipsed full moon setting in the west-northwest. If you want to catch the selenelion, head to a location that offers a clear view of both the western and eastern horizons.

To find out when to see the lunar eclipse in your area, check out NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio maps, which break down the various stages of the eclipse and the corresponding times in each time zone in the U.S. March's blood moon is the last total lunar eclipse visible anywhere on Earth until December 31, 2028.