The current 24 hours are playing host to two astronomical events: last night's lunar eclipse, and today's winter solstice. The winter solstice doesn't leave much in the way of immediate visual evidence; instead, it marks the most extreme inclination of the Earth's axis, which draws the northern hemisphere the furthest from the Sun. Once the solstice passes (which will happen at 23:38 Universal Time), this will gradually reverse, lengthening the days.
The eclipse, however, has an obvious visual appeal, and many people stayed up to watch as the Moon turned dark. For anyone who suffered from cloudy skies or who happened to be away from the primary path of the eclipse, NASA and other organizations hosted webcasts of the event.
NASA has also made a picture of the eclipse (shown above), its image of the day. You can get it in sizes that should make it great as a desktop background. A time-lapse video of the eclipse has also been posted at Vimeo.
This was apparently the first eclipse that occurred on a winter solstice since 1632, so those of you who stayed up late saw a very rare event indeed. If you took any pictures, please link to them in the discussion. For anyone who wants to make sure you catch the next eclipse, NASA runs a website to help you find out when and where to go.
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