If you went outside at exactly the same time every day and took a picture that included the Sun, how would the Sun appear to move? With great planning and effort, such a series of images can be taken. The figure-8 path the Sun follows over the course of a year is called an analemma.

Today, earthbound skygazers can celebrate a solstice, a new Moon, the closest approach of planet Mars since 1988 ... oh yes, and a total eclipse of the Sun, the first total solar eclipse of the third millennium.

Is this painting the earliest realistic depiction of a total eclipse of the Sun? Some historians believe it is. The above painting was completed in 1735 by Cosmas Damian Asam, a painter and architect famous in early eighteenth century Germany.