| When looking at
the sun, one must always do it safely. Most of the time, the sun is much too bright to
look at directly. Read on to learn how to observe the sun without damaging your own eyes.
The safest way for us to look at the sun is actually to not look at it directly at all.
The process which to use is called eyepiece projection. You can use either a telescope or
binoculars to project the sun's image on to a sheet of paper or cardboard. In order to do
this, stand with your back facing the sun and your face looking at the cardboard. Do not
look through the telescope or binoculars at the sun. Looking at the sun with a telescope
even for a second could be enough to cause blindness. Adjust the eyepiece of the telesope
so that it is behind its normal position. This way, one can vary the position and the
distance of the paper. An image as wide as a hand would be enough to see the sunspots. You
can trace the outlines of the spots and actually follow the way they change as the sun
rotates. The sun is about one million times brighter than the moon. Due to the brightness,
we would need a filter to see the sunspots. The filter must cut 1/1,000,000 of the sun's
rays. These filters are made by telescope manufaturers. They go over the the front end of
the telescope so that most of the light does not pass through. There are some parts of the
sun's atmosphere that are not visible in white light. Those parts only can be seen when
the unique color of hydrogen is isolated. This light is called the H-alpha line and falls
in the red part of the color spectrum. Professionals have filters that can pass this
H-alpha line. By looking at the sun with an H-alpha filter, we are actually looking at the
sun's chromosphere. The chromosphere is made up of spikes of gas, called spicules.These
spicules rise and fall in 15 minutes. When looking through the filter, the solar surface
looks multicolored and dark lines form, known as filaments. When a filament is rotated so
it seems it is at the edge of the sun, it is known as a prominence. By pointing your
telescope at the sun on a sunny day, you can see exciting things happening. You can see
the sunspots, filaments, prominences, and the changes that occur from day to day. |
