Northern lights coincide with total lunar eclipse in a rare display

In a rare and beautiful display, in Fairbanks, Alaska, the northern lights danced across the sky at the same time as another uncommon event: a total lunar eclipse, also known as a blood moon.

Lunar eclipses happen when the Earth passes between the sun and the full moon, blocking most of the sunlight from reaching it. But a tiny bit of refracted, or bent, sunlight still reaches the moon. That light skims along the edges of Earth and gets filtered through the atmosphere, giving the moon a reddish tinge.