Some images are so iconic they are burned into our collective psyche: Often, these are photographs that captured a particular historical moment or helped fuel a social movement. Or they might have allowed ordinary people to witness miracles of science, human endeavor or exploration that are usually only visible to specialists. This includes the image of a fetus entitled “How Life Begins,” one of the first pictures to be taken with an endoscope, in 1965.

The first ever selfie was taken in 1839 (well, sort of): Following what’s believed to be the world’s first ever photo — or at least the oldest surviving photo — in 1826 or 1827, photography pioneer and lamp manufacturer Robert Cornelius can lay claim to capturing the first ever photography self-portrait.

From the first photo of the moon to the first picture inside the sun’s corona, photography has become a key component of science, technology and geographical exploration, helping us to better understand the physical world and bypassing the limits of human perception. An 1840 daguerreotype is the first image of the moon, while the first photo of the sun was taken in 1845. Earth was first photographed from the moon in 1966, and the first photo to be taken inside the sun’s corona was captured in 2018 by a solar probe 16.9 mn miles away from our favorite star.