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On July 28, 1851, the first-ever photo of a total solar eclipse was recorded by a Prussian daguerreotypist named Johann Julius Friedrich Berkowski.
Daguerreotypy is an old photographic process that uses silver-plated copper treated with chemical fumes that make it light-sensitive.
Johann Julius Friedrich Berkowski captured the first photographic image of a total solar eclipse on July 28, 1851, as a daguerreotype, but the first human records referencing an eclipse are thousands of years old. (Image credit: PD-US)Previous attempts to take photos of solar eclipses failed to show the contrast between the sun’s corona and the dark disk of the moon.
Using a small, six-centimeter telescope, Berkowski captured an 84-second exposure starting right after the moon moved completely in front of the sun.
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Hanneke Weitering is an editor at Space.com with 10 years of experience in science journalism. She has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.
