Staring at the Sun

"The sun at midnight," from Arctic Expeditions from British and Foreign Shores from the Earliest to the Expedition of 1875 by David Murray Smith, 1875.

From Heroes of the Dawn by Violet Russell, 1914.

"Little by little the golden aureole crept on," from The Conquest of the Moon by André Laurie, 1889.

So in 1896 we had already sliced open the sun (to discover its labyrinthine innards), and yet NASA's launch of a solar probe has been pushed back to 2018.  One step forward, two steps back.  From The Half Hour Library of Travel, Nature and Science for Young Readers, 1896.

From The People of the Mist by Henry Rider Haggard, 1894.

"Gaze on the sun; the shadow-time is past," from The Lily and the Cross by Edith Nesbit, 1887.

This is the best sun-riven-in-twain we've seen all week, from Prodigiorvm Ac Ostentorvm Chronicon, 1557.