total solar eclipse due on August 12<\/a>, we look back at the photographers who first aimed their lenses at the blackened sun.\n<\/p>\n\n ![]()
Eclipse viewing from Gaunts House at Holt near Wimborne…. (Image: Echo)\n<\/p>\n
\n Before digital sensors and smartphones, photographing totality was difficult and often dangerous.\n<\/p>\n
\n For decades, photographers and astronomers hauled heavy kit to remote fields and rooftops, often producing overexposed shots with no solar corona.\n<\/p>\n
\n Early photographic plates could not cope with the contrast between the blazing sun and black moon.\n<\/p>\n
\n ![]()
Eclipse viewing from Gaunts House at Holt near Wimborne….chanting during the event…. (Image: Echo)\n<\/p>\n
\n On July 28, 1851, Prussian daguerreotypist Johann Julius Friedrich Berkowski succeeded where others had failed.\n<\/p>\n
\n At the Royal Observatory in K\u00f6nigsberg, Berkowski attached a small refracting telescope to his camera.\n<\/p>\n
\n During totality, he exposed a chemically treated silver-plated copper sheet for 84 seconds.\n<\/p>\n
\n The daguerreotype was the first successful photograph of a total solar eclipse and revealed the sun’s delicate, super-hot outer atmosphere.\n<\/p>\n
\n ![]()
Jean and Dick Rands and their grandchildren ben and nathan try out their eclipse viewers (Image: Echo)\n<\/p>\n
\n That single daguerreotype changed science and public understanding.\n<\/p>\n
\n Total eclipses no longer vanished from memory as quickly as they disappeared from the sky.\n<\/p>\n
\n Photographs let scientists study the sun in new detail and allowed others to see eclipses they might never witness.\n<\/p>\n
\n By the turn of the 20th century, eclipse-chasing had become a popular public event, not just a niche scientific pursuit.\n<\/p>\n
\n ![]()
Young students hoping for a glimpse of the Solar Eclipse on Bournemouth beach (Image: Echo)\n<\/p>\n
\n While pioneers made history worldwide, these photographs show how people in Southampton and nearby experienced eclipses<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n\n These archive images show crowds in local parks and residents using homemade viewers in their gardens<\/a>, sharing a wonder felt around the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For centuries, the sudden loss of the sun filled communities with dread \u2014 and drove people to capture…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":724932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-724931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/724932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}