Over the next hour, the darkness deepens until, at 5.30am, totality arrives. By then, the Moon will be sinking, just 15 degrees above the horizon, and the morning twilight will already be gathering.

This is not the grand overhead spectacle of some eclipses, but something more fragile: a blood-red Moon low in the west, fading in the growing light.

At 6.11am, with the sky getting brighter in the run up to sunrise, the eclipse reaches its midpoint, with the Moon scarcely eight degrees up. By 6.52am, the total phase is ending, as the Moon almost touches the horizon. At 7.01, it will slip away entirely, setting in the west as the day begins.

No telescope is needed, just a coat for the morning chill and a willingness to be up while most of the city is still asleep.

For Māori, eclipses were not just astronomical curiosities but moments of power.

One story tells of Hina, the moon goddess, engaged in battle so fierce the light is stolen until it is washed anew in Tāne's life-giving radiance. Others warn that Whiro-te-tīpua, lord of darkness and disease, wages war on the Moon during an eclipse.

These stories remind us that what we see in the sky is never just light and shadow but also memory and meaning, carried through generations.

This lunar eclipse marks the opening act of an eclipse season, a twice-yearly interval when the orbits of the Sun, Earth, and Moon align just so.

They come in pairs, sometimes trios, and, sure enough, in a couple of weeks - on September 22 - we will see a partial solar eclipse at sunrise, as the Moon takes a quiet nibble out of the Sun.