Picturing the Eclipse

The celestial world has transfixed artists for centuries. And few cosmic events are as dramatic as a solar eclipse. 

Whether you’ll have a chance to see this year’s total solar eclipse or not, you can explore our collection. Discover depictions of eclipses—and other awe-inspiring images of the cosmos.  

The eclipse chaser

German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans took his earliest photographs of the night sky when he was 10 years old. He is a devoted eclipse chaser and has witnessed at least five total solar eclipses. Tillmans made these photos of the 1998 total solar eclipse in Aruba. The black and blue images are from his camera pointed skyward, while the beige photos are of the ground. Tillmans captures the crescent shadows that leaves cast during an eclipse, nature’s own pinhole cameras. 

In astronomical terms, a solar eclipse is straightforward. The moon passes between the earth and sun, obscuring our view of the sun. But on the ground, it’s a strange experience. The sudden darkness seems otherworldly—even apocalyptic. Tillmans describes the event:

You could see the shadow arrive, travelling at the speed of an aeroplane. You could look down the horizon and then it came in a ‘whoosh’ right over you... Suddenly there is the corona in the sky; this ring of ice-cold fire. You see stars and planets and black sky. The horizon has an eerie, very dark, dusky light. It’s totally shocking because it’s so powerful; something that comes from outside this planet and touches you. And then after three minutes it’s all over and it’s daylight again.

The anonymous recordings of 1932

We know little about these images of the 1932 eclipse, which passed through part of New England and Canada. The first, a gelatin silver print, records the corona of the total eclipse. Our colleagues at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum think that astronomers at universities in the area, such as Harvard, likely made these. Dayton, Ohio, only caught views of a partial eclipse, which is recorded in the second image. 

The eclipse, personified

Elihu Vedder was an American symbolist painter best known for his murals at the Library of Congress. In those murals, he shows ideals like peace and prosperity as figures of women. Similarly, in his study for the painting The Eclipse of the Sun by the Moon, the moon is a winged figure. She blocks the light of the sun with both her wings and the rocky sphere of the moon itself. 

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