Celestial shadows: From terror and myth to science and beauty

Abstract This paper tells a graphical story of the ancestral importance of the Sun as a seemingly eternal source of light and heat. It describes the terror produced by the sudden disappearance of the Sun in the middle of the day and the imaginative myths that these dark events have generated worldwide. Then the science will include a description of a total solar eclipse and what can be learnt from the extended atmosphere of the Sun, the corona, once it becomes visible against the darkened sky during the precious moments of totality. There are subtle distortions produced by powerful magnetic fields that modulate the shape of the corona along a solar cycle of activity of eleven years. And yet, as the fast drop in temperature and sudden darkness over the landscape just before totality is experienced, we still feel that primeval fear and terror forever embedded in our humanity.