Low tech, high satisfaction - viewing the solar eclipse
Hombrechtikon, 20th March 2015
It’s mid-morning and I’m sitting at home. My last lesson ended at 8.30 and my next one doesn’t begin until midday. It’s a cloudless spring day and you would expect the surrounding woods and fields to be bathed in golden sunlight. Instead the world has a strange muted, silvery appearance. We are just at the high point of the best eclipse of the sun for years.
I’m feeling frustrated. I’ve tried everything I can think of to observe the eclipse. The shops sold out of the special protective goggles a long time ago, so I attached a pair of binoculars to a tripod and tried to focus the image of the sun onto a sheet of paper. I tried focussing a magnifying glass on a piece of paper. I tried taking a highly under-exposed photograph of the sun. None of these things brought any satisfaction at all. I thought to myself, “If I don’t think of a way soon, the eclipse will be over, and I won’t have seen anything.”
But then an idea occurred to me. A very low-tech idea, something which I remember from my primary school days. I ran downstairs and retrieved an empty ratatouille tin from the recycling box. With a sharp tool I pierced a tiny hole in the middle of the base of the tin. I ran back to the kitchen, and pointed the end with the hole at the sun and held the tin over a white surface. And it worked! A simple but effective pin-hole camera.
We are used to seeing a “crescent moon” in the sky, but today I saw an image of a “crescent sun”. The image was small, pale, not very sharp and back-to-front. But it was unmistakably an image of the disc of the sun, partially covered by the moon.
Sometimes low-tech solutions are the most satisfactory.
Front page story
Look back to 1665: the Plague Year
Contact
If you’re interested in English lessons or translation and checking services, please feel free to contact me in the language of your choice - English, French, German or even Lingala!
Here are my details:
Here are my details:
Mobile
078 609 56 51
+41 78 609 56 51
+41 78 609 56 51
Location
Tödistrasse 9, 8634 Hombrechtikon
(New address from 24th March 2018)
(New address from 24th March 2018)
If you are travelling from Rüti / Wolfhausen, drive past the Hombrechtikon place-name sign for about 300 metres and turn right into Tödistrasse, just before the Tobel bus stop.
Approaching from Hombrechtikon
If you are approaching from the centre of Hombrechtikon, follow the signs to Rüti. At the Tobel junction (the Methodist Church is on the left) turn left. Tödistrasse is the next turning on the left, just past the Tobel bus stop.
The entrance to our new flat is about 100 metres from the junction with Rütistrasse, on the left-hand side of the road.
The house number is number 9 and we are on the first floor.
There are a few visitor’s parking bays a short distance beyond the entrance, on the left.
There are a few visitor’s parking bays a short distance beyond the entrance, on the left.
Arriving by bus
If you arrive by bus from Bubikon, get off the bus at Tobel and follow Tödiweg until you get to Tödistrasse. Our house is on the right.