A total lunar eclipse happening very early Wednesday morning turns out to be the cherry on top of an exciting and fairly rare lunar trifecta.

Here's the rundown:

  1. It's the Full Snow Moon and the second full moon of the month, so we call it a "blue moon"
  2. It's a close perigee (or "supermoon") due to the elliptical, not circular, orbit of the moon around Earth and therefore will appear slightly bigger and brighter
  3. A perfect alignment between the Sun, Earth and Moon will cause our planet's shadow to cross the moon immediately before sunrise Wednesday, making it look reddish (and possibly "blood red") in color.

In the above video, NASA scientist Geronimo Villanueva tells our Burton Fitzsimmons it's an event well worth waking up early to see.