The Blood Moon Tetrad Begins Tonight

Tonight marks the first in a series of four total lunar eclipses that will occur from now until the end of next year.

It’s called a lunar eclipse tetrad, which is a term for when the moon passes through the Earth’s shadow, causing a total lunar eclipse, four times in a row.

All four eclipses will be “blood moons,” meaning that the moon will appear red in color as light from the Sun is refracted over the Earth’s atmosphere. Spooky.

The final eclipse will occur in September 2015.

Now, obviously, I wouldn’t mention an astronomical event unless it looked really cool or was surrounded by some kind of bizarre conspiracy theory. Well, don’t worry, because this one has both!

For one, there’s the whole blood moon thing. Awesome. If you’re interested in catching this first one, it’ll be most visible over the United States.

The event will begin at 12:54 am EDT, Tuesday April 15, and the moon should be completely covered by Earth’s shadow at 3:07 am EDT.

You can also watch the eclipse live online courtesy Slooh and the below YouTube stream. Now that the lunar eclipse is over, you can watch the entire event in the video below.

But there’s also an end times prophecy surrounding this tetrad, as is usually the case.

According to CNN, it’s a Biblical prophecy from a paraphrase of Acts 2:20: “And I will show wonders in Heaven above and signs in the Earth beneath, the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.”

You can read all about that over here, but I wouldn’t worry; we’ve seen a number of blood moon tetrads throughout the 20th Century, and even one from 2003-2004. World’s not over, yet!