If you hadn't heard, a rare lunar eclipse occurred Monday night, and WTAP News was there...even if you were asleep!

Our Daybreak crew taped the event and edited the action down to some stop action frames, until trees blocked the setting moon about 5:45 a.m.

But, if you were lucky enough to keep watching, you might have seen totality, when the entire disc is painted in dusky red light, bent around the Earth's atmosphere, like a prism.

Lunar eclipses are important because they are one of the few proofs that the Earth is round... something that we take for granted today.

If you can see the curved shadow of the Earth crawl across the face of the moon in a matter of an hour or so, that pretty much proves that the Earth must be round.

Of course, since we've been sending men into space, we now have photos and other evidence to support the notion, but for ancient Renaissance man, this was the clincher!

The next lunar eclipse will be visible on the evening of February 17th, 2008.