Lunar Eclipse

The moon will put on a three-hour show early Tuesday, slowly disappearing, turning copper red, and reappearing.

It is red because the light from the sun is being refracted through the Earth's atmosphere.

Lunar eclipses occur when Earth's shadow crosses the moon. The outer shadow is called the penumbra, and the dark, inner shadow is called the umbra.

Some ancient civilizations believed a lunar eclipse meant a dragon was in the sky, eating the moon and flooding the sky with its blood, while other civilizations banged pots and pans until the moon simply reappeared.

-Beccy Tanner, Witchita Eagle

See simulation on wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2010_lunar_eclipse