The very first photo of the sun (1845)

On April 2, 1845, French physicists Léon Foucault and Hippolyte Fizeau took the first photograph of the sun. They used a relatively new technique, that of the daguerreotype.

This technique was developed in 1837 by the French inventor Louis Daguerre . In 1839 he took the first photo of the moon. However, this photo has not survived because the inventor’s laboratory was destroyed by fire shortly afterwards. The very first moon photo was also lost.

The very first photo of the sun still exists. This was taken on the second of April of the year 1845 with a shutter speed of 1/60 of a second. The photo has a diameter of twelve centimeters. Foucault and Fizeau took the photo because they were jointly investigating the interference of light and heat. Léon Foucault would eventually become especially famous with the Foucault Pendulum, named after him, with which he showed that the earth revolved .

The oldest surviving photograph of the moon – also a daguerreotype – dates from 1851 and was taken by John Adams Whipple.