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Pinhole Viewer for the Partial Solar Eclipse
Jet City Orange writes: "I made a quickie pinhole solar viewer to observe the recent partial solar eclipse. And then I photographed the whole thing with my digital camera. Homebrew astrophotography right here in West Seattle."
My method for safely observing the eclipse was to use a monocular (you could easily use binoculars as well, just use one half of 'em) to project the image onto a piece of stiff white tagboard. It allows a larger and clearer picture (I was able to actually see what I believe were sunspots, as they didn't change when I moved the image around!). Simply line up the monocular with the sun by making the shadow end-on, with the main lens towards the sun. Then, move the eyepiece close to the tagboard. Find the white dot, then move the monocular out and focus it by trial and error. It took me about a minute to set up, and I got a nice clear image of the sun that would have been about an inch in diameter, assuming it didn't have a big bite taken out of it ;-).
One saftey note: never look directly at the sun, whether it's through the monocular or with the naked eye. While it seems like you might never do it, I almost did several times, as it seemed so much easier than trying to get the little projected image in focus on the paper. Please, be careful with your eyes. Cyborg-vision is still a long way off.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
It seems like it has been 15 or 20 years since I've been able to experience an eclipse. Every single time one comes around it's either storming or cloud covered in the area that I live in (was this time too). Thanks for the pics, though. Maybe next time (2005?) I'll take a road trip and get it out of my system.
can be found at this site:
http://images.fbrtech.com/tora/proj/eclipse/
NMG
How's it going over in Admiral? I live in Highpoint, but unfortunately I thought the eclipse started at 16:00, so obviously I didn't see anything as cool as you did. Not to mention that I was way to lazy to punch a hole in some paper :)
I was riding my bike with my fiancee around E. Riverside in Austin, TX, and I stopped when we got to the ACC campus golf course, suddenly remembering the eclipse. I found a Jackie Goodman poster in a ditch, tore it in half and poked it through with a pen. Then I projected onto the other half of the sign; horray, the eclipse had just started. She wasn't as impressed as I was after the first minute or so, so she drug me away. Then, we went to Albertsons (they don't have cheap roses this June..what a bummer) and I had to see how far things had progressed. So, I grabbed a sign advertising flowers ($1.99 each, what a rip!), poked it and projected onto the A-frame in front of the store. She was embarrassed, but I got to see 60% coverage!
Fully OT here, but 50 karma is a license to share...
A guy named Jerry created that pinhole viewer page and made a little joke about 'jerry-rigging' something. Cute. But I've always understood the term to be 'jury-rigged'. So I did a minimal amount of net research. Earliest reference to 'jerry-rigged' I could find was 1919, while the Oxford English Dictionary shows 'jury-rigged' from 1788 (and 'jury-mast' and other uses of 'jury' for a temporary replacement for a damaged part of a ship as far back as 1616.) Jerry-rigged may be a recent variant, playing off the name 'Jerry' (war slang for German), implying substandard German quality. I'll stick with 'jury-rigged'.
Yea, I did it. I just finished posting the pictures to my Mac.com website.
Hopefully later, I'll add a bit of commentary on what time each photo was taken (you can look at the EXIF data for that information). I'm located in Southern California (San Diego) and all pictures were taken with my Cannon Powershot S30 digital Camera through a set of sun-watching glasses I picked up at the local astronomy store.
http://homepage.mac.com/smitty825/solareclipse/
Doh!
I got rained out. You got the shots I wanted but could not get; my digital camera lay next to me at work all day, just in case I was there late, so I could get pictures as I walked to the car. With the rain, though, I hever had the chance.
Thank you for the post!
i am a soviet space shuttle
Yea, that's what I did, works pretty well. Use unlabled CD-Rs for best results. (I tried an RW and couldn't see through it at all, but needed two CD-Rs, experiment beforehand...)