Partial Solar Eclipse Coming to N.America

mblase writes: "Space.com has the goods on the upcoming June 10 partial solar eclipse, the only North American eclipse this decade. Greater eclipsing occurs in the South, and Midwesterners and Texans will get the best show when maximum eclipsing occurs near sunset, when the sun appears largest. A good excuse to teach any young children you know some basic astronomy. (Remember, use pinhole cameras, never look directly at the sun, yadda yadda yadda.)"

Re:Sun Spotters

[Mondrames]

Just for consitency the AC yanked the activity from this site [nsf.gov] - Which is the second link in the article

Credit where credit is due.

Pinhole Viewers

[Anonymous Coward]

But Mommy do I have to?

The view of the eclipse through a pin hole sucks! All the cool kids get to burn their retinas. Why can't I?

Floppy Diskettes

[karnal]

I've always used 3 1/2" diskettes for this task, and it hasn't killed my eyes yet. (Although, you can never be too careful.)

I just slide back the dust cover, and look at the sun through the magnetic media portion of the diskette. Voila - perfect picture, and your eyes don't hurt.

Gotta wonder about the UV rays though.... ???

Re:Floppy Diskettes

[Pentagon13]

Great suggestion! I never thought of that. I have always used three or four layers worth of film negatives stacked on each other, which probably yields similar results to a floppy disk. I never quite understood the pinhole way so this was a simple alternative.

Re:Floppy Diskettes

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that pinhole shit is some pretty complicated high-tech stuff. I wouldn't expect the average slashdotter to understand it.

The best thing is clear glass. I know this sounds like a bad idea, but the glass stops the dangerous ultraviolet rays while passing only the visible color range. This will give you a good view of the eclipse without any worry about your retinas. At first it's kind of hard to look directly at the sun, even through the clear glass, but you can watch the eclipse this way for as long as you want.

Just be careful with the glass. If you drop it, you might break it and cut yourself.

Re:Floppy Diskettes

[heneon]

Diskettes are so.... 2001's! Couple of years ago I was fortunate to see total solar eclipse, and I used CDs. If it has got lot of clear surface on the label side (e.g. NT 4 installation cd) it works great!

Welding Shades

[mgarraha]

Diskettes transmit too much IR and provide an inferior image, according to this Sky and Telescope article by Ralph Chou [skyandtelescope.com], a professor of optometry. Don't fool around, get a #14 shade from a welding supply shop. They're cheap, convenient, and reliable. Mine is a 4x5-inch plate of black ceramic material that turns the Sun a lime green color. When I bought it, the guys at the shop said, "Yeah, we got a few of those left over from the last eclipse. Nobody uses 'em for welding, they're too dark!"

Re:Welding Shades

[Transcendent]

better yet, get a sun lenz for a telescope..... its made for looking at the sun and it wont change it to any funky color.

Look under a tree for cool efect!

[zulux]

Last eclipse, I happened to be looking at the ground under a leafy tree. The tree and it's leaves created bunches of little pin-hole lenses and cast tons of little crecent images of the partially-eclipsed sun on the ground. Worth looking for.

Re:Look under a tree for cool efect!

[mgarraha]

In 1994 I happened to encounter a group of school children during a partial eclipse. The clouds parted, and on cue from their teacher, all of them whipped out little pinhole cameras they had made from sheets of paper! Now that was a sight I won't forget.

Re:Look under a tree for cool efect!

[Tackhead]

> In 1994 I happened to encounter a group of school children during a partial eclipse. The clouds parted, and on cue from their teacher, all of them whipped out little pinhole cameras they had made from sheets of paper! Now that was a sight I won't forget.

I will never forgive the high school teacher who drew the drapes in my class during an eclipse because some st00pid-azz kid convinced said ignoramus of a "teacher" that "eclipse rays can blind you, you've gotta close the drapes!"

At least my high school physics teacher, who, when I told him the story, gave the aforementioned luzer a righteous chewing-out in the staff lounge (regrettably, after-the-fact, and even more regrettably, I couldn't listen to it), will never have to pay for a beer if he's ever in the same bar I am.

I had to wait another 10 years before I got to see a near-total eclipse again.

If you see a teacher and a group of kids with pinhole cameras during an eclipse, thank him/her for doing the right thing.

Too bad about the next N.America eclipse...

[bopo]

The next solar eclipse visible across this much of North America will occur in 2012.

Let's hope it happens before December 22, 2012. Otherwise we'll all probably be too busy fighting shapeshifting bounty hunters and supersoldiers to notice.

Oh well.

Don't look directly at the sun..

[rhetland]

Really, don't look directly at the sun [angryflower.com]....

A Dragon Ate the Sun?

[Kettleboy]

...the only North American eclipse this decade
I seem to recall a solar eclipse that occured on Dec 25, 2000 that was partially visible from N. America.
Technically, that was in the current decade. P.

Re:A Dragon Ate the Sun?

[anothy]

nope.
just as the 21st century started at midnight, jan 1, 2001, so did the current decade. december of 2000 was part of the previous century/millenium/decade. thanks to the stupid roman catholics for creating a numbering system starting at 1 instead of 0. it's dumb, but it's what we've got.