pinhole solar viewing box

We learned in our Astronomy course (Exploring Creation with Astronomy by Apologia) that it is not safe to look directly at the sun, but that viewing the sun with a Solar Pinhole Viewing Box is safe! So we constructed one. See the teeny dot on the white paper?

That’s the sun shining through the pinhole we made in the foil, which was taped over a large square we cut into the opposite side of the box.

Supposedly, if your hole is big enough, you can sometimes see dark spots on the sun’s reflection on the paper and those are sunspots! We didn’t see any this day, but we’ll do some more solar viewing and try again.

Another day, while studying the sun, we got out the magnifying glass and melted and burned stuff.

I still am blown away that the sun’s rays can do that from roughly 93,000,000 miles away. How about there being solar flares that dwarf Earth? That makes me feel insignificant and significant at the same time. It’s so cool getting to relearn this stuff with my kids and hear their thoughts on these matters.