Solar eclipse, 1898.

Photograph of an original drawing, showing the corona around the Sun during a solar eclipse. The pearly and ghostly light is only seen during the brief period of totality when the Moon blocks the dazzlingly bright surface of the Sun. The corona forms the outer and very tenuous atmosphere of the Sun, an envelope of highly ionised gas, superheated to over a million degrees centigrade. This drawing, made by W H Wesley, shows the appearance of the corona during the solar eclipse of 22 January 1898 as viewed from Sahdol in India.