Staring at the Sun and Moon
The Eclipse 2012
You are not supposed to look directly at the eclipse.So I called my dad to see if he had some welding helmets appropriate for staring at the sun. I didn’t realize that, in his garage, he had stored the same hand-made viewing apparatuses that he made for us when we were children.
To make your own viewing apparatus: take a shoulder-width square piece of cardboard and cut a small square window in the center, large enough to hold a welding lens. Tape the lens into the window and hand to child (or adult). Safely view the eclipse holding the cardboard up to the sky and looking through the small square viewing area.
My dad made three of these. We each had our own when we were three young boys. This time we shared with our neighbors. To our surprise, we walked out front to find several of our neighbors outside with the same goal. Tony, our metal working neighbor, and John, our old-school neigbor both had full-fledged welding helmets. Our new neighbors had a soda box converted into a peep-hole camera. The eclipse was ultra-cute and small in the peep-hole camera. They thought it was pathetic in comparison to looking directly at the sun though a welding lens. But in the end it was fun to experience the eclipse in a variety of ways, including the shadows!
The light from the sun filtered through trees casting eclipse-shaped shadows on the ground. The video originally had my unedited narration with redundant statements like “here’s shadows of the eclipse through trees again”. I felt that my voice managed to turn something exciting into something uncomfortably lame. So I redeemed the audio with a song. Although the video doesn’t come close to representing the reality of the experience, and there was a bit of a strangeness to be excited over looking at something as mundane as the sun and the moon, I hope you enjoy. 
To make your own viewing apparatus: take a shoulder-width square piece of cardboard and cut a small square window in the center, large enough to hold a welding lens. Tape the lens into the window and hand to child (or adult). Safely view the eclipse holding the cardboard up to the sky and looking through the small square viewing area.
My dad made three of these. We each had our own when we were three young boys. This time we shared with our neighbors. To our surprise, we walked out front to find several of our neighbors outside with the same goal. Tony, our metal working neighbor, and John, our old-school neigbor both had full-fledged welding helmets. Our new neighbors had a soda box converted into a peep-hole camera. The eclipse was ultra-cute and small in the peep-hole camera. They thought it was pathetic in comparison to looking directly at the sun though a welding lens. But in the end it was fun to experience the eclipse in a variety of ways, including the shadows!
The light from the sun filtered through trees casting eclipse-shaped shadows on the ground. The video originally had my unedited narration with redundant statements like “here’s shadows of the eclipse through trees again”. I felt that my voice managed to turn something exciting into something uncomfortably lame. So I redeemed the audio with a song. Although the video doesn’t come close to representing the reality of the experience, and there was a bit of a strangeness to be excited over looking at something as mundane as the sun and the moon, I hope you enjoy.
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