Starting at 4:51 on Tuesday morning, the moon will turn from white to red and signal the coming of the End of Days, when Satan shall return to torture you sinners for all eternity and the righteous will ascend to Heaven in rapture. Either that, or the Earth's shadow will fall upon the moon for about three and a half hours.

Mid-eclipse happens for Torontonians at precisely 6:37 a.m., when the "blood moon" is at its darkest. Because the sun is rising during the second half of the eclipse, we won't get to see the entire spectacular experienced by the West Coast.

The moon is still slightly visible during an eclipse because some light still reaches it around the edges of the Earth, but a full lunar eclipse is rare because a full moon is usually above or below the plane of the Earth's orbit. It looks red, as it often does at sunrise and sunset, because blue light is scattered when refracted through the atmosphere.

Photographers wishing to photograph the eclipse need a tripod and a powerful telephoto lens of about 400 mm or more at about ISO 400, or to shoot through a telescope. Simple 7 x 35 binoculars are sufficient enough get a great view the lunar eclipse, and unlike solar eclipses, they're perfectly safe to stare at. So turn around, bright eyes!

Photos of the March lunar eclipse over Scotland by foxypar4, via Flickr.