The darkest hour, before

For those skywatchers and solstice folk, tomorrow marks something unusual. A lunar eclipse will coincide with the winter solstice.

Over at http://shadowandsubstance.com/ you can see how the moon will move through the eclipse, taking on shades of coppery red for a brief time.

Apparently the solstice/eclipse has only happened once in the last two thousand years, in the seventeenth century. You'd wonder how people must have seen it thousands of years ago: coming out to witness - to capture or invoke - the sun on its shortest day, and seeing the moon turn red. Whether auspicious or not, it was probably not a sign to be ignored.

A NASA article on the eclipse is o'er yonder:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/17dec_solsticeeclipse/