On April 2, 1845, the first-ever photograph of the Sun was captured by French physicists Hippolyte Fizeau and Léon Foucault. Using an early photographic process called a daguerreotype, they produced a 12 cm image with an exposure time of just 1/60th of a second — a remarkable technical achievement for that era

The image clearly revealed sunspots and the solar limb, offering one of the first visual records of activity on the Sun’s surface. At a time when photography itself was still in its infancy, this breakthrough marked a major step forward in both astronomy and imaging technology, opening the door to studying celestial objects in entirely new ways