[Justin] is a bit of an astronomy geek, but that doesn’t mean
he’s always prepared for celestial phenomena. When he realized
the May 20th annular eclipse was only a few days away, [Justin]
dropped everything, built a pinhole solar viewer, and drove
three hours for the best view of the eclipse. He learned
something watching the eclipse; these sort of things sneak up on
you, and you really need to plan ahead if you want to truly
enjoy the music of the celestial spheres. After the eclipse,
[Justin] set to work building a filter to watch a Venusian
eclipse with his telescope. If [Justin] pointed his 8 inch
Schmidt–Cassegrain directly at the sun, he would most likely
damage the optics in his ‘scope, burn several retinas, and other
very, very bad things. The best way to view the Sun with a
telescope is with an expensive Hydrogen alpha or a general solar
filter, but these are expensive and the clock was rapidly
ticking down to the transit of Venus. After reading that
blocking most of the light from coming into the ‘