By Mark Bialczak
LPL Communications Specialist
The moon will pass in front of the sun Monday, Aug. 21.
Are you set for the big event in our sky?
The Liverpool Public Library will hold a program from 1 to 3 p.m. to help patrons make the most of the rare solar eclipse that will sweep across North America. Some folks will experience a total eclipse, something that hasn’t happened in the continental United States since 1979.
Those who live in what the science people are calling the “path of totality” — a swath that will stretch from Oregon on the West Coast to the Carolinas on our side of the country — are expecting people to travel from neighboring states to their cities to catch the event. The buzz has been building for months.
The moon will pass in front of the sun to produce an eclipse of about 75 percent here. That will still be mighty impressive, and more fun to experience armed with knowledge and with a group.
LPL has scheduled a program from 1 to 3 p.m. to help on both those fronts.
Retired earth science teacher Len Sharp will start the session off in the Carman Community Room by explaining the how and why of the eclipse. Then everybody can gather on the Dinosaur Garden lawn to look skyward through the ISO-approved glasses safe for direct solar viewing distributed by the Space Science Institute’s National Center for Interactive Learning.
Unfortunately, LPL has run out of eclipse glasses, but Consumer Reports has instructions on how to make your own pinhole camera:
If You Can’t Get Glasses…
Your eclipse isn’t ruined. You can easily create a pinhole camera, a simple device that passes light through a small hole and projects an image of the sun onto a surface.
Here’s how—with materials you probably already have at home:
- Take two sheets of stiff white cardstock and cut a square hole in the middle of one of them.
- Tape aluminum foil over the hole.
- Use a pin or paper clip to poke a hole in the foil.
- Place your second piece of cardstock on the ground and hold the piece with the foil above it with the foil facing up.
- Stand with the sun behind you and view the projected image on the cardstock below.
- Adjust until you can see a small circle of light, projected from the pinhole, on the other sheet of paper. That’s a tiny image of the sun, which will become crescent-shaped as the moon moves across it.
“No need to buy anything,” says Mike Kentrianakis, the solar eclipse project manager for the American Astronomical Society. “It’s just as fun and comfortable. And it’s free.”
For a slightly more advanced version, try making a pinhole camera out of a cereal box. You can use NASA’s guide here.
