The full moon turned a shade of red early Friday morning as the western hemisphere was able to experience a total lunar eclipse. A lunar eclipse happens when the the sun, Earth and moon are lined up, in that order, on the same plane. The Earth blocks the sunlight from reaching the moon, casting a shadow on the lunar surface. During totality, when the Earth totally blocks the light, the red color comes from the sunlight that is bent around the Earth’s atmosphere and falls on the moon. Since our atmosphere scatters the shorter-wavelength blue light, longer-wavelength red light is refracted around it. If you were standing on the moon at that time, you would experience a total solar eclipse, since the Earth would block the sunlight.

Friday’s eclipse lasted from about 1 a.m. to 4:45 a.m.