Partial eclipse of the sun, 16 July 1860.

Photographic glas slide, taken during the 1860 Solar Eclipse, showing the Sun partly obscured by the Moon. The picture taken by Warren De La Rue (1815-1889), a pioneer of astrophotography, was obtained in Northern Spain using the Kew Photoheliograph, a telescope specially designed to photograph the Sun. Photographs taken at totality, when the Sun was fully hidden, showed the solar corona, a ghostly halo of pearly light. Similar images taken elsewhere first showed this to be an intrinsic solar feature rather an effect produced by the Earth's atmosphere.