The first lunar eclipse in almost three years lit up eastern Canadian skies with a copper hue on Saturday night.
The entire sky show lasted three-and-a-half hours with the moon entirely covered by the Earth's shadow for 74 minutes.
The eclipse was best viewed from the East Coast of Canada but cloud cover in many parts of the region -- including Newfoundland, which is battling the remnants of a snow storm -- resulted in a poor view.
Halifax experienced clear skies for the event, which prompted many people to climb Citadel Hill with their telescopes and cameras.
"It's pretty remarkable -- I enjoy the colour of it and I like watching (the moon) slip out of sight like it was being kissed by the atmosphere," Andrea Flowers, 28, told The Canadian Press. "I don't really like the moon, because it gets in the way of my stars, but this is a way to enjoy it."
"It's very surreal," said Frank Burke, 52. "You never see the moon looking like that."
Another top spot in the city for astronomy buffs was at Saint Mary's University's campus observatory, which hosted about 40 people.
Dave Lane, an astronomy technician, estimated Saturday's eclipse was middling for brightness.
"The eclipse was really quite spectacular," said Lane. "This one was perfectly timed -- it was early evening, wasn't in the middle of the night, the weather co-operated."
Other prime viewing spots included Africa, Europe and parts of Asia, with the lunar show being visible from every continent -- a rarity for such an event.
Don Kelly, like many amateur astronomers in Atlantic Canada, had been preparing for the event and explained although viewers see the eclipse in slow motion; it's actually a high-speed phenomenon.
"I always like to watch the motion of objects in space. This is something 3,000 kilometres in diameters moving four thousand miles per hour. And that is awesome. It's not something you want to step in front of, but great for viewing from a safe distance," Cameron told CTV Atlantic on Saturday.
Watching the celestial show is a tradition dating back thousands of years; one that helped ancient astronomers better understand the planet.
"Good things to watch for, just watch for the curvature of the Earth in there. A couple of thousand years ago, the philosophers noticed that, and were first to wonder whether the Earth was round, that maybe, we weren't on a flat planet," Curt Nason of the Saint John Astronomy Club told CTV Atlantic on Saturday.
Unlike a solar eclipse, viewers will not have to worry about protecting their eye sight or enlisting the help of a telescope.
Total lunar eclipses occur when the Earth passes directly between the sun and the moon.
As the Earth blocks out all but a tiny portion of refracted light from the moon, a small amount of light rays will leak out into the Earth's atmosphere causing the moon to appear as either a copper, orange or brown colour.
The more pollution or volcanic ash in the atmosphere, the deeper red the moon will be during a lunar eclipse.
The moon's vanishing act began around 5:30 p.m. AT. For the rest of the country, the sky didn't start to darken until the eclipse had already begun. This means provinces west of Quebec got a limited view.
If you did happen to miss the celestial event, another total lunar eclipse is predicted for late August and will offer the best visibility on the West Coast of Canada.
With files from Â鶹´«Ã½, CTV Atlantic and The Canadian Press
