Bob Alborzian was a child when his father first showed him the Milky Way galaxy through the lens of a telescope, leading to a lifelong love of astronomy.

Now 69, Alborzian was on hand with his own homemade telescope Monday night at the Griffith Observatory, where he and hundreds of others awaited the blood moon, the first total eclipse of 2014.

The eclipse, which will peak early Tuesday, will be the first in more than three years to be visible from Los Angeles and uninterrupted by sunrise. In Los Angeles, the most impressive part will begin at 10:58 p.m. when the first bite is taken out of the moon. It will be blotted out entirely at 12:06 a.m. Tuesday, said experts at the observatory.

As the bite spreads across the moon, it will transform into a dark blood moon. The dark red hue will come from the light of sunsets and sunrises over the rest of the Earth.

Griffith Observatory will remain open to visitors, who can look up at the eclipse either from the building or from the grass and sidewalk areas. Experts will provide presentations on the eclipse.

The homemade telescope through which Alborzian planned to view the eclipse had an 8-inch lens and was constructed out of cardboard. The telescope rotated because its bottom was made from an old jazz record. Others who had come to view the eclipse peeked inside the telescope, which was covered in newspaper clippings about Ella Fitzgerald, Sam Cooke and the Beatles.

I only cover it in good music, said Alborzian, a member of Sidewalk Astronomers, an amateur astronomy association.

The crowds descended upon the Observatory early, with hundreds of people lounging on the lawn hours before the eclipse was set to begin. Families passed the time with picnics and throwing baseballs.

The observatory and the Los Angeles Astronomical Society, as well as other astronomy clubs and organizations, offered telescopes for viewers.

Heven Renteria, 31, said he fell in love with the sky at age 6 while visiting the observatory with his mother. Gazing at the stars while overseas serving as a Marine brought him back to astronomy as a hobby.

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Lunar eclipse: Crowds descend on observatory for 'blood moon'