- "text": "Go (safely) observe the sun!\nFind a small telescope, buy a cheap solar filter, and go (safely) observe the sun.\nAdvice:\n\nConsider asking a local astronomy club for a volunteer to help with this. Odds are they will already have the equipment you need. Or ask a science teacher friend to help.\nThe more expensive solar filters as just as safe as the cheap solar filters. The expensive solar filters show slightly more detail with the sunspots, so they are better if you were going to try to take photographs, but for just looking at the sun and counting the number of sunspots the expensive solar filters aren’t that much better than the inexpensive ones.\nUse the largest (widest diameter, heaviest) eyepiece that you have because these eyepieces zoom out the most, thus making it much easier to put the sun in view. The smaller eyepieces are for zooming in, but because of this it is difficult to use these eyepieces unless you are already precisely aimed at the sun. So maybe just stick with the zoomed out eyepieces for this activity.\nDo NOT use the spotting scope attached to the telescope to help align the telescope with the sun. Instead, look closely at the shadow that your telescope makes, and use that to align the telescope with the sun.\nPut the solar filter on the telescope at the beginning and leave it there until the observing is over. You can align the telescope with the sun even with the solar filter on.\nIf you are worried about aligning the telescope with the sun, you can practice in the evenings by aligning the telescope with the moon (with the solar filter off, obviously). If the moon is bright enough you can use the shadow trick to align the telescope with the moon without the spotting scope.\nIt is possible that the sun will not be very magnetically active on the day that you observe it and perhaps only one or zero sunspots will be visible\n\nAlternative ways to observe sunspots\n\nIf you are less crafty, or it turns out to be cloudy on the day you planned to do all this, then check out the website for NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, look at “The Sun Now” and click through all the different images of the sun\nAnother way to observe the sun is something that people do to observe eclipses called a “box pinhole projector”. Get a cardboard box (larger is better), cut out part of it and place aluminum foil on that part and then use a needle or a paperclip to put a small hole in the aluminum foil. This will produce an image of the sun on the opposite side of the box. It helps to put regular office paper on the side where the image of the sun appears. If the sunspot is large enough, you may be able to see it with this method\nStill another way to observe the sun is using a small telescope and something that some call a “light bucket” or “sun funnel”\n\n\n\n\n\n\nA random OSU Marion professor is projecting the sun onto a thin piece of rubber that is attached to a funnel purchased from an auto parts store.\nAn advantage of the light bucket / sun funnel is that students don’t need to look into an eyepiece, consequently you don’t need to worry about the focus being correct for each student (since they will all have different eyesight). A disadvantage is that you can see sunspots but not as clearly as you can with an optical solar filter and an eyepiece. Note that when you use the sun funnel, you do not use a solar filter (which is true of the image above)."
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