Page 8 - March 2017 Rev E_Neat

ISSUE NUMBER 165 MARCH 2017
THE TOWN CRIER

Watching the Night Skies
By Edwin Evans, MD

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As promised this month, I want to tell you how to safely view the upcoming solar eclipse on August 21 .
Just as you cannot look directly into the Sun without causing permanent damage to your eyes, you must use
a tool of some kind to watch an eclipse. A quick, easy, virtually free tool is a pinhole collimator. Before
sitting down to write this, I timed myself making a collimator- 20 seconds, tops! Take a pizza box (guess
what I had for lunch?) and cut out two squares at least four inches square. With a knife, core out a hole in
one of the pieces- I just stuck my pocketknife blade in and rotated around, making a hole about ½” in size.
Take a piece of aluminum foil and tape it over this hole. Now, make a pinhole thru the aluminum (over the
underlying hole you made with the knife). Go outside in the sunlight, turn your back to the Sun and hold the
cardboard up so the light is shining over your shoulder onto the pinhole. With the other piece of the pizza
box in your other hand, hold it so the light coming over your shoulder is shining thru the hole onto the other
piece. You will see a focused image of the Sun on the cardboard! The further away you hold the two
pieces, the larger the image will be but it will be correspondingly dimmer. Be sure to practice this a few
times before the big day. Not to insult anyone’s intelligence, but DO NOT look through the pinhole at the
Sun! Even at the height of the eclipse, when you might think it would be safe, it is NOT SAFE and will per-
manently damage your eye! Also not to insult you, remove all pizza from the box before trying this…
This month is the best for viewing planets since we have started this column together! At different
times, Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are all visible this month. The coolest thing going on is
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that Venus passes between the Earth and the Sun this month, early in the morning of the 25 . If skies are
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clear, try this: view Venus low in the West at sunset on the 24 (it has been getting lower each day, setting
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closer and closer to the Sun) and then on the morning of the 25 look to the East and see Venus rise before
the Sun does! I’m really a nerd, but that’s pretty cool and
only happens a couple of times a year. If you haven’t got-
ten your binoculars yet, I DO give permission for you to
look through your pinhole collimator directly at Venus-
you’ll be rewarded with seeing the thin crescent shape of
the planet.
In the second half of the month, look for Mercury in
the West also. You will notice from night to night that
Mercury is higher, and Venus is lower before Sunset. Mars
will be above Mercury, and to the left. On the evenings of
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the 29 and 30 , the thin crescent Moon will also be very
near the two planets in the West before Sunset.
Be sure to drag along a grandchild while you’re hav-
ing all this fun watching the skies in March! You just might
start someone on a hobby for life

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