Following story via space.com:
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The moon took on an eerie blood-red hue early Tuesday during the first total lunar eclipse of 2014, a celestial sight that wowed potentially millions of stargazers across North and South America.
The total lunar eclipse of April 15 lasted about 3.5 hours between late Monday and early Tuesday, with the Earth’s shadow slowing darkening the face of the so-called “Blood Moon” in a jaw-dropping sight for stargazers willing to stay up extra late or rise super-early for the event.
“Definitely worth the early wake-up call,” skywatcher Brett Bonine of Arkansas told Space.com in an email. [Blood Moon Photos: Amazing Total Lunar Eclipse Views for April 15]
Photographer Sean Parker of Tucson, Ariz., created this mosaic of the total lunar eclipse phases on April 15, 2014 using images taken with a through a 12″ LX Meade 200 telescope with a Canon 6D camera.
Astronomer Bob Berman, who hosted a live lunar eclipse webcast for the Slooh community telescope using views from Arizona’s Prescott Observatory, said event was also one for the record books because of another bright object in the predawn sky.
“It was the most special one, I would say, of our lives,” Berman said during the Slooh webcast. “What made it particularly extraordinary was that it happened on the same night as the closest approach of Mars to Earth in years.”
Mars made its closest approach to Earth since 2008 on Monday night (April 14), coming within 57.4 million miles (92.4 million km) of our planet.
So the Red Planet and the “Blood Moon” shined together in the predawn sky in a rare event, Berman said, adding that the bright blue star Spica completed the show.
Astro At A Glance 