SAN FRANCISCO -- In the western U.S., Hawaii and elsewhere across the globe, moon watchers were treated on Saturday to a rare celestial  phenomenon: a total lunar eclipse  . For about 50 minutes starting at 6:06 a.m. PST, the moon was completely blocked by the Earth's shadow. With only some indirect sunlight able to reach it after passing through the Earth's atmosphere, the moon took on a reddish weak light. Since the atmosphere scatters  blue light, only red light strikes the moon, giving it a dark red color1. Dally Sam, who runs a public relations firm in Hawaii, said it had been cloudy and rainy, but the weather cleared just in time for the eclipse. Around 3 a.m., he awoke, as he usually does, and remembered to step outside the house in time to catch the beginning of the eclipse about a half hour later. No one else in the neighborhood was up then. "It was turning that dark red color1," Sayre, aged 47, said, "I'd better get a camera. To be able to see it just right outside our house was really cool." At the local observatory in Los Angeles, some 300 people, many holding coffee cups in the cold morning air, sat with blankets and chairs on the observatory's great grass land. "It's really a celestial festival out here," John Peter, aged 39, told the Los Angeles Times as he set up his camera. Lying on a slope  north of downtown near the Hollywood sign, the place offers clear views of the sky. Observatory officials reminded the crowd when the eclipse began and big applause burst when the celestial event ended. A total lunar eclipse occurs when the moon goes through the long shadow cast by the Earth and is blocked from the sunlight that brightens it. ks5u We can infer from Para 5 that at 3:30 a.m. Dally Sam   _  .
found it was still raining heavily saw a total lunar eclipse went out walking as he usually does still had to wait for a long time to see a total lunar eclipse