Insider Blog: Making a pinhole camera to view the eclipse

There are several ways to view the eclipse with filtered sunglasses or through a protected camera, and you can find more details in previous Insiders. You can also project the shape of the eclipse onto the ground by making your own kind of lens, which is surprisingly easy to do! Creating a pinhole projector takes just a few simple items and can make the eclipse safely visible to several people at once.

To start, grab a piece of cardboard you can comfortably hold in your hands, and cut a square into the middle.

Then, get some aluminum foil and cut out a square that will fit over the hole in the cardboard.

Lastly, tape the foil over the hole and puncture a small pinhole in the middle of the aluminum foil with a pin.

This small hole in the center will focus in light from the sun and show the shape of the eclipse on surfaces below. This works in full daylight as well, when the sun appears as a small dot on the paper below. But during the eclipse, it will show only the ring shape around the moon, and this can be used to watch all phases of the eclipse.

As always, NEVER look at the sun directly even during the eclipse, only use certified solar filtered sunglasses for direct viewing.