(4 of 11)
The sun has long been pre-eminent in human thoughts and actions. Almost from the beginning, people worshiped the sun as the beneficent provider of light and life, and as a god, called Ra by the Egyptians, Helios by the Greeks and Sol by the Romans. To the Aztecs, the sun god was Huitzilopochtli, whom they nourished with human sacrifices. Egypt's great pyramids at Giza were built with their sides aligned with the rising sun at the vernal equinox, and the temple complex at Karnak was dedicated to Ra. The ancient circle at Stonehenge, in England, was apparently constructed so that the sun would rise over one of the great stones at the time of the summer solstice.
From the beginnings of history and literature, human beings have also invoked the sun. In rejecting peace offers from Darius before the battle of Gaugamela, Alexander the Great explained, "Heaven cannot brook two suns, nor earth two masters." And in 1911, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, speaking of his nation, declared, "No one can dispute with us the place in the sun that is our due."
Through the centuries, few natural phenomena have inspired as much fear and awe as solar eclipses. The ancient Chinese used firecrackers and gongs to drive away the spirit they thought was devouring the sun. Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee, aware that a most timely total eclipse was going to occur, escaped being burned at the stake by King Arthur's knights when he predicted that the sun would disappear. A benign form of sun worship continues to this day, not only among beachgoers but also by a group of intrepid American astronomy buffs who have traveled around the world by plane, ship and jeep, from Java to Siberia to Africa, to view each of the past dozen total eclipses.
Even in ancient times, however, an occasional hardy soul refused to deify the sun. The Greek philosopher Anaxagoras brazenly claimed that it was merely a ball of fiery stone, and was arrested and banished from Athens for his blasphemy. But his radical concept caught on and was later refined by Aristotle, who proclaimed the sun an unchanging sphere of pure fire, devoid of any imperfections.
Aristotle's view prevailed through the Middle Ages, was embraced by Christianity and went largely unquestioned until Galileo and other early 17th century sky watchers pointed the newly invented telescope at the sun and saw black spots on its surface. So much for solar purity. Despite clerical disapproval, the reality of sunspots was quickly accepted. Still, more than two centuries passed before Samuel Heinrich Schwabe, a German apothecary and amateur astronomer, discovered the strange, cyclic behavior of the solar blemishes.
Schwabe had been searching for the hypothetical planet Vulcan, supposedly the closest one to the sun, hoping to spot it in silhouette as it moved across the solar disk. In the process, he observed and kept meticulous records of sunspots over a 17-year period. Finally, in 1843, he recognized and announced the eleven-year cyclic nature of the spots and wrote, "I may compare myself to Saul, who went to seek his father's ass and found a Kingdom."