Okay, that's probably one of the worst paraphrasings ever of the old CCR song title, but it seems to fit the situation we'll see this Saturday evening, March 3rd, as a fully eclipsed moon, "clad" in the rusty orange hues of indirect sunlight scattered and refracted around the edges of the earth by our atmosphere, slips above the horizon at about 6:07 pm EST while well within the earth's shadow. It will then begin to emerge from that shadow with a brightening crescent at around 6:58 pm, and will finally return to a full moon appearance at about 8:11 pm.

This will be the first total lunar eclipse since October of 2004, but is also the first in a series of three that will occur within the next year. The timing is a little tricky with this one in our area, though, as the moon will rise just a bit before the sun sets at 6:11 pm, and we will remain in Civil Twilight, with a fair amount of residual sunlight, until 6:37 pm. There will still be a little leftover sunlight in the sky even as the moon begins to emerge from the earth's shadow just before 7 pm, but by then the surrounding sky should be dark enough for a reasonable look at the eclipsed lunar disk, so long as your view isn't blocked by nearby trees, hills or buildings. This is a bit of a concern for this event, since even by the time the moon begins to drift out of the earth's shadow, it will only have risen to an angle of just over 9 degrees above the eastern horizon (almost due east at that time), which is only about a tenth of the way up, of course, to straight overhead. Also of note, the planet Saturn will be visible in the sky a little ways up and a bit to the right of the moon at that time.

For a nice discussion of the upcoming eclipse, see

http://skytonight.com/observing/highlights/This_Weekends_Total_Lunar_Eclipse.html

and for some really nice photos of the most recent eclipse in 2004, and many others at the main site, see

http://www.mreclipse.com/LEphoto/TLE2004Oct/TLE2004Oct-1B.html

which was the source for the two composite images above.