User:Maplestrip/Solar eclipses in art

Solar eclipses are a recurring subject of painting and photography.

Prehistory and antiquity
Very few prehistoric depictions of solar eclipses have been found. Some experts suggest this may be because solar eclipses were regarded as bad omens by many ancient civilizations, and Karl Kusserow of Princeton University said that rock carving was a laborious effort for drawing "the worst of all times." Within Norse mythology, solar eclipses were depicted as the wolves Sköll and Hati chasing the sun and moon across the sky. Within Chinese mythology, solar eclipses were depicted as a dragon devouring the sun.

An Ancestral Puebloan petroglyph resembling a coronal mass ejection was discovered in Chaco Canyon in 1992. Archaeoastronomer Kim Malville connected the carving with the solar eclipse of July 11, 1097, which passed over the pueblos. The sun was at a maximum of its magnetic activity, which makes an occurrence of coronal mass ejection more likely. Malville suggested that this depiction would indicate a positive relationship with solar eclipses.

Photography
The first successful photograph taken of a solar eclipse was that of the July 28, 1851 eclipse, taken by Julius Berkowski. Commissioned by the Royal Prussian Observatory at Königsberg, Berkowski used the "state of the art" daguerreotype process to capture the Sun's corona in contrast with the darkness of the Moon. Other photographers attempted to picture solar eclipses before, but failed due to the long exposure requirements of 19th-century photography.