In our latest blog post, "Ovid and the Istrian Skies," Jeffrey Marshall writes about a manuscript that may tell the story of a lunar eclipse in 1454. The four-page Latin manuscript is bound into the back of a 1497/1498 copy of the works of Ovid. Initial translation indicates that at least part of the manuscript concerns an unusual pattern of light that was observed in the sky above Istria on the night of March 30, 1454. (Istria lies directly across the Adriatic Sea from Venice.) An illustration shows a circle spanned by two bars that form a cross, with a crescent moon near the middle. According to the manuscript, a great many people, “indeed almost all in those parts” according to the text, observed this circle and cross of silver against an azure sky with a red quarter-moon near its middle at about 11 p.m. that night. Read the full story to learn why viewers worried that the light pattern was a foreboding omen.