Those in the United States will have the unique opportunity to witness a rare total lunar eclipse early Saturday morning.

On the morning of April 4, the moon will dip into Earth's shadow, which will turn its bright white orb into a deep coppery red color. The edge of the moon will begin to enter the amber core of Earth's shadow at 3:16 a.m. PDT and just before sunrise on the east coast at 6:16 a.m. EDT, reports CBS San Francisco.

For the next hour and 45 minutes, Earth's shadow will move across the lunar disk, ultimately covering the entire moon at 4:58 a.m. PDT and 7:58 a.m. EDT. At this time, the moon's tint will turn a shade of blood red.

While some total lunar eclipses last for over an hour, the total phase of this weekend's eclipse will last for less than 5 minutes, making it the shortest lunar eclipse of the century. "In this case, totality spans just 4 minutes and 43 seconds since the moon will be skimming the outskirts of the Earth's shadow, rather than passing centrally through it," notes CBS. 

According to CS Monitor, "the next lunar eclipse featuring a span of totality shorter than the April 4 eclipse won't occur until Sep. 11, 2155."

Fortunately, the eclipse will also be visible to the naked eye to observers in most of North America, the Asian Far East, Hawaii and the central Pacific islands.

While Lunar eclipses tend not to come in any particular order, sometimes the sequence is more orderly. When this happens, and four lunar eclipses are all total, the series is called a tetrad. The fourth and final eclipse of this tetrad will occur on Sept. 28, 2015, reports ABC News.

Christian believers also say that the eclipse may be a sign of the coming of Christ since it falls in between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday or Easter, reports Mirror.co.uk. As a result, this could be the fulfilling of the prophecy in the King James Bible that states: "The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD comes" in Joel 2:31.

The Blood Moon can be streamed live on Slooh.com.