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Science Professors Help Students See Eclipse Safely

By Tony Sandleben, IPR News | Published on in Education, Local News, Science
The eclipse could damage phone cameras, unless you let Muncie clouds filter. (Photo: Tim Underhill)

Many Hoosiers were scrambling today to find a safe way to view the rare solar eclipse without damaging their eyes. Tens of thousands of protective glasses were handed out on Ball State University’s campus in Muncie, but that still left many people without a safe way to see the eclipse. As IPR’s Tony Sandleben reports, some science professors on campus helped some students see.

“And and it’s been almost a hundred years since there was a total eclipse that went all the way across the country.”

Joel Bryan works in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Ball State. Knowing full-well the special sunglasses would be in short supply, Bryan and his colleagues got creative.

A white filter over a telescope projects an image of the eclipse’s progress. (Photo: Tony Sandleben)

“Instead of looking through the viewer, let the viewer project an image of the sun and the eclipse on the screen here.”

Bryan brought a telescope to Ball State’s eclipse viewing party. The viewfinder of the telescope was wrapped in a white material. When the telescope was pointed to the sun, it projected an image of the eclipse onto that white material that was perfectly safe to look at with the naked eye.

Tom McConnell from Ball State’s Biology Department had an even simpler way of viewing the eclipse safely.

“We’re using binoculars to capture an image and project it onto a white piece of paper so we can look at the image rather than the sun itself.”

Binoculars project a double image of the eclipse. (Photo: Tony Sandleben)

Some tried using their phones to see the eclipse, but that could damage the phones’ cameras. Both McConnell and Bryan’s setups drew a small audience, but both were also hoping to give people a chance to see the eclipse while protecting both their phones and their eyes.