View of blood moon in Edmonton on Tuesday will depend on clear sky

Frank Florian from the Telus World of Science Edmonton explains the blood moon happening on Tuesday.

Southern Albertans will have a better chance than northern Albertans at viewing Tuesday’s blood moon if the weather forecast proves true.

A blood moon is technically known as a total lunar eclipse: when the moon moves through Earth’s shadow. In the darkest part of the shadow, called the umbra, no direct sunlight can reach the moon. However, red light, which bends the most, passes through the Earth’s atmosphere and is refracted onto the moon, turning it reddish.

“Sometimes it can be a little bit brighter, sometimes a little bit dimmer, in terms of that reddish colour, it can turn really, really red. Sometimes the moon, in the past, has even disappeared from view if there’s a lot of stuff in the Earth’s atmosphere that absorbs the light,” explained Frank Florian, Telus World of Science Edmonton’s (TWOSE) senior manager of the planetarium and space sciences.

Florian said the moon will start to enter the umbra around 2:50 a.m. MT and is expected to be totally in the umbra at 4:04 a.m. That’s when it’ll appear red.

The moon will move out of the shadow between 5:02 a.m. and 6:17 a.m.

Unfortunately, as of Monday morning, the forecast for viewing in Edmonton didn’t look promising, according to Florian.

“I’ve seen things like this before, where it looks like it’s going to be overcast and all of a sudden there’s some clearing that does take place. It’s a chance we take…. The clouds will just do what they do,” he told CTV News Edmonton.

However, he said chances of the blood moon being visible in southern Alberta, particularly in Banff National Park, were “very promising.”

No equipment is needed to view a total lunar eclipse, although Florian said binoculars will improve the picture.

The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) Observatory at TWOSE will only be open if Florian expects the total lunar eclipse to be visible.

Total lunar eclipses happen roughly every three years, although they occasionally happen more frequently. The last total lunar eclipse happened in March 2025. The next one will happen in December 2028.

A partial lunar eclipse will happen in August.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Evan Klippenstein and Kent Morrison