Pinhole Solar Projector

You might be curious about how to observe the sun safely without losing your eyeballs. There are many different ways to observe the sun without damaging your eyesight. In fact, the quickest and simplest way to do this is to build a super-easy pinhole camera that projects an image of the sun onto an index card for you to view.

CAUTION: DO NOT LOOK AT THE SUN THROUGH ANYTHING WITH LENSES!!

This simple activity requires only these materials:

• tack
• 2 index cards (any size)
• sunlight

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Here’s what you do:

 
Download Student Worksheet & Exercises

With your tack, make a small hole in the center of one of the cards. Stack one card about 12″ above the over and go out into the sun. Adjust the spacing between the cards so a sharp image of the sun is projected onto the lower paper. The sun will be about the size of a pea.

You can experiment with the size of the hole you use to project your image. What happens if your hole is really big? Too small? What if you bend the lower card while viewing? What if you punch two holes? Or three?

Exercises

1.  How many longitude degrees per day does the sunspot move?
2.  Do all sunspots move at the same rate?
3.  Did some of the sunspots change size or shape, appear or disappear?

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