Simplest, safest and cheapest:
Get two pieces of paper or cardboard. Put a pinhole in one. Move it back and forth over the second until the image of the sun is focused.
Yes, exactly. The Sun is not more dangerous during an eclipse, but it’s not less dangerous, either.
This is a really, really bad idea.
- Merely looking through the film will not determine if it is a safe method for viewing the eclipse.
- If it is not safe, such a test could permanently damage your eyes.
Yeah, gotta agree you with there … get the right tool for the job the first time …
My understanding is eclipses are dangerous because your eyes adjust to the reduced light, irises expand (versus being pinpoints during a normal bright sunny day), and therefore much more susceptible to damage.
I figure that this would be a bad time to prove out the penny wise, pound foolish premise. I bought $15 glasses from one of the ISO US sources. for my family. https://www.eclipseglasses.com
That’s part of it and the other part is that when there’s an eclipse people want to look at it.
My wife Has a total knee surgery planed that day, so we will miss it.
7-11 carries eclipse glasses made by Explore Scientific. At my local store they’re $2.99 for two pairs. The things are just cardboard frames with nearly-opaque plastic “lenses,” but since I will only use them once it doesn’t matter how durable they are.
Yeah, I don’t understand all the effort people are talking about making pinhole cameras or cardboard boxes. You can get safe viewing glasses for a pittance and allow your self to look directly at the sun!
It seems like viewing a eclipse through a cardboard box instead of looking directly at it is akin to seeing a photograph of a piece of fine art instead of being in the museum seeing it in person.
If you use a pinhole box then you can photograph the result. It’s much more difficult to that with eclipse glasses.
You don’t even need to make the pinhole.
Just look at the pattern of light on the ground after it passes through the leaves of a tree - all the little pools of light will be crescents!
Pin-hole cameras are pretty cool anyway … not many peoples these days are aware of the phenomena … someone can wow-and-amaze folks whilst awaiting totality … camera obscura is the googlable name for the device … getting special glasses at 7/11 may be the easy way, but it wouldn’t be the Cowboy Way …
Ugh, so being a procrastinator by nature, I was pretty proud of myself for having ordered some eclipse viewing glasses from Amazon about a month ago (two sets in fact, in case some got torn or whatever). The packaging said ISO and CE certified, but today I got an email from Amazon saying they had been unable to verify the safety of these particular glasses! So now I’m in a pickle because everyone else is sold out or only selling the glasses in sets of 25!
Apparently, Amazon is sending out these notices for all solar filters bought from them (even certified ones)!
ETA: I got a notice about the Gosky telescope filter I bought - I’m using it anyway. It’s aluminized mylar - too simple to fail!
I bought welding glass about five years ago for this event … sort of … actually we had an annular solar eclipse here locally then … but the intent was the same …
Bought mine at Lowes, $1.98. They appear to be legit.
My (two) emails from Amazon said they’ll be giving me a refund for both items, without me having to ship them back. One is a set (for my binoculars) from Orion, which IS on the approved list linked above. ???
I’ll also note that I tested them both today, and got identical looking images-they both do indeed look “aluminized” to me (as in identical material).
I suppose that technically, I got mine for an annular solar eclipse… but the eclipsing body was Venus, not Luna.
I noticed something the other day that unfortunately has about a zero chance of being repeated on Eclipse Day. A little background:
I live in the Seattle area, and for the past several weeks we have been sort of living with a severe haze caused by a whole bunch of wildfires up in British Columbia making a LOT of smoke that the Canadians have generously decided to share with us. (Those damned north winds, dontcha know.) Even though we are hundreds of miles south of the fires, we have been down to from three to five miles visibility almost every day for the past three or so weeks.
I was driving home from work several days ago, and the sun was about three hours above the horizon. The haze was heavy, and the sun was visible as a big orange ball in the sky. And you could look directly at it without any discomfort whatsoever. Really a gorgeous and impressive sight! And I thought, “wouldn’t it be super if we had that same haze during the eclipse.” Everybody could get a great view of the eclipse (it will be only partial here) without messing with those glasses. That would be something worth seeing!