A total lunar eclipse will cause a real blood moon tonight, exactly 9 years after Zelda: Breath of the Wild unleashed blood moons on Hyrule – "Better hurry killing all Lynels"

A total lunar eclipse will cause a red blood moon early March 3, and you'd better believe that Zelda fans have clocked that this scarlet heavenly body is descending nine years after the release of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which also descended upon humanity on March 3 and notably used blood moons as a sign that enemies in its open world have respawned. I look forward to seeing what horrors reappear in our world overnight.

Over here on Earth, a blood moon is caused by light filtering through our planet's atmosphere during a lunar eclipse alignment, with physics painting the moon with the same brush it normally reserves for sunsets. The March 3 blood moon will reach totality at 3:04am PT / 6:04 am ET and will be visible for folks in North America, Australia, and East Asia, as Space.com reports. Peak bloodiness is expected around 3:34am PT / 6:34am ET.

Estimates from Time and Date suggest billions of people will be able to see the red moon before totality begins to fade after approximately 58 minutes. The whole eclipse event is expected to last for more than five hours altogether, starting at roughly 12:44am PT / 3:44am ET.

This is the last blood moon projected until 2029 – technically, the night of December 31, 2028. Nasa has a handy sheet showing previous and projected lunar eclipses.

This week's blood moon is the first to perfectly align with a blood moon-filled Zelda game anniversary like this, though we're expecting another one on March 3, 2045, which should be close to the release date of Fallout 5. And in 2078, which I hope to live to see, we'll get a penumbral eclipse on April 27, the original, Japanese release date for the moon-heavy The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.

In Hyrule, or at least in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom's shared vision of Zelda's stomping grounds, a Blood Moon signifies a swell in the power of Ganon. When the big bad's energy reaches its peak, a special cutscene triggers and all of the enemies around the world respawn. Meticulous players will estimate blood moon timing when farming enemies for high-value items and resources (I spoke to one player who's spent thousands of hours pushing this to a rare extreme), and many fans are saying the same thing about tonight's lunar event.

"Better hurry killing all Lynels and restock horns and arrows," one Tears of the Kingdom fan suggests on Reddit.

"Time to cook all my power meals for the year," another fan joked in a previous post.

The Legend of Zelda actor would love to see an Ocarina of Time remake in Breath of the Wild's engine: "You'd have two of the most innovative games coming together".