2-995-646 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Eclipse of the Sun - facsimile of [one of] the two photographs obtained during the totality, 1860. Astronomer Warren De La Rue captured images in Rivabellosa, Spain. 'My more important object was to endeavour to obtain photographs of the various phases of the eclipse...by means of the Kew photoheliograph, an instrument I designed...for the special object of delineating the sun's image by means of photography...The first plate at the moment of totality was...exposed just one minute, and although my observations with the telescope gave me great hopes that the luminous prominences would be depicted, yet it was with a thrill of pleasure that...I learnt from Mr. Reynolds, who was charged with developing the photographs, that the picture was coming out...Just before and after the eclipse sun-pictures were made, and during the progress of the eclipse thirty-one photographs were obtained, the times of which are carefully registered. These will serve hereafter to determine the path of the moon across the sun's disc and other data with considerable accuracy. The serrated edge of the moon is perfectly depicted in all the photographs...[proving] incontestably that the luminous prominences belong to the sun and not to the moon...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1860.