For centuries, the sudden loss of the sun filled communities with dread — and drove people to capture it.
With a total solar eclipse due on August 12, we look back at the photographers who first aimed their lenses at the blackened sun.
Solar Eclipse in Southampton city centre ..
Before digital sensors and smartphones, photographing totality was difficult and often dangerous.
For decades, photographers and astronomers hauled heavy kit to remote fields and rooftops, often producing overexposed shots with no solar corona.
Early photographic plates could not cope with the contrast between the blazing sun and black moon.
On July 28, 1851, Prussian daguerreotypist Johann Julius Friedrich Berkowski succeeded where others had failed.
Solar Eclipse in Southampton city centre .. the Bargate arches are turnt to darkness as the sun disappears
At the Royal Observatory in Königsberg, Berkowski attached a small refracting telescope to his camera.
During totality, he exposed a chemically treated silver-plated copper sheet for 84 seconds.
The daguerreotype was the first successful photograph of a total solar eclipse and revealed the sun’s delicate, super-hot outer atmosphere.
That single daguerreotype changed science and public understanding.
Observing the sky the Eclipse at Winchester High Street.
Total eclipses no longer vanished from memory as quickly as they disappeared from the sky.
Photographs let scientists study the sun in new detail and allowed others to see eclipses they might never witness.
By the turn of the 20th century, eclipse-chasing had become a popular public event, not just a niche scientific pursuit.
While pioneers made history worldwide, these photographs show how people in Southampton and nearby experienced eclipses.
These archive images show crowds on local commons and residents using homemade viewers in their gardens, sharing a wonder felt around the world.