For many ancient civilisations, the sight of a Blood Moon was startling: the Incas interpreted it as a jaguar attacking the moon, while in ancient Mesopotamia, a lunar eclipse was thought to be a direct assault on the king.

In Hindu folklore, the lunar eclipse came as a result of a demon drinking the elixir of immortality. In reality, the Blood Moon isn’t dark magic - it’s a trick of the light caused by a total lunar eclipse. While the sunlight passes through the Earth’s atmosphere, the light gets filtered, scattered, refracted and directed towards the moon.

From earth, that makes our pale moon appear brick red in colour. In fact, it’s this same process of light scattering that causes sunrises and sunsets to have that warm red glow.