Partial Solar Eclipse

Today we decided to just take the day off from doing our normal bookwork, as we had a fun activity planned for the kids.

Pinhole Camera

Dad was great and made a pinhole camera for the kids to observe the partial solar eclipse we are having today. So instead of sitting down with the books, we discussed what a solar eclipse is, watched a couple of videos on youtube that explain it well, then we opened up Stellarium (an astronomy program) on dad's computer and started watching the progression as the moon passed between the earth and the sun.

Finding the Moon on Stellarium

Pointing out the sun on Stellarium

In roughly 10 minute intervals, we hurried outside with our pinhole camera and compared what we could see to what we were watching happening on Stellarium. We were all amazed at how well we could see the image of the sun and that we could actually see a huge sunspot (sadly, my cell phone wasn't able to take a clear enough picture to show it but we will post a photo from the DSLR later tonight).

We spent a good 3 hours running in and out of the house.. It was a fun day :)