Week of Oct. 8-14, 2023

Last week, I told you about the upcoming annular solar eclipse on Oct. 14. I hope you've made plans to view or photograph it from your home or perhaps to travel to the path of annularity.

Whatever your plans, you'll need to order proper solar filters to keep your eyes, binoculars, telescope or camera safe. You can find sources of these from the American Astronomical Society (eclipse.aas.org); just click "Resources" and place your order before the vendors sell out.

Just remember that homemade filters are very dangerous; fortunately, there are ways to view the eclipse indirectly.

One safe technique is to create a pinhole projector. Cover one end of a box with aluminum foil and punch a tiny hole in it with a pin or a pencil point. With the hole aimed toward the sun, you can project the eclipse onto a white sheet of paper taped onto the opposite side of the box. Do not look through the hole; use it only to project the sun's image onto the screen.

A disadvantage of this technique is that the image will be quite tiny. The only way to make the image larger is to increase the distance to the projection screen.

Anything with small holes can become a pinhole projector. A straw hat or colander, for example, make great pinhole projectors. So do the leaves of a tree. Just check out the ground under a sunlit tree; all the bright dots you see there are images of the sun. During the partial eclipse, each of those images will be tiny crescents! And, of course, these are perfectly safe to view or photograph.

Another indirect method is to punch out a 1/4-inch hole in a piece of paper and tape the paper over a flat pocket mirror. If you hold the mirror so that it reflects the sun's image onto a distant flat surface (for example, onto a light-colored wall in a darkened room), you'll see the eclipse a bit larger. As always, be extra careful not to shine this into someone's eyes.

My favorite way to ensure you'll have the best and safest view? Check with your local planetarium, science museum or amateur astronomy club about where they'll be set up that day for free public viewing.

Now, if you'd like to try your hand at photographing the spectacle, there are ways to do this, but the admonition still holds: Never aim a camera or smartphone toward the sun — and never look through the camera's viewfinder — without a proper solar filter attached firmly between the optics and the sun.

You'll discover that the sun's image will be quite small on the photographic sensor. To create a larger image, you'll need a pretty hefty telephoto lens or telescope (also with a solar filter in front of it).

To learn more about shooting the eclipse safely, visit Fred Espenak's excellent website MrEclipse.com, then scroll down and click on "How to Photograph an Annular Solar Eclipse." Here, you'll find a wealth of information about capturing this amazing celestial show.

Keep in mind that there will be other eclipses, but you've got only one pair of eyes! Please protect them!

Looking down at the ground like this is one of the safe ways to view a solar eclipse.

Like and follow Dennis Mammana at facebook/dennismammana. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at creators.com.

Photo credit: at Unsplash