To make your own solar eclipse glasses, you will need a few specific materials and to follow safety guidelines to protect your eyes from the sun's harmful rays. Follow the steps below precisely:
- You should acquire money and buy the glasses.
Everyone we talked to said you shouldn’t actually make your own glasses.
The technology is too good and too affordable to take any chance with your eyesight, said Jason Lewin, chief marketing officer of American Paper Optics. Headquartered in Tennessee, they are one of a handful of eclipse viewing glasses manufacturers in North America recommended by the American Astronomical Society, and NASA’s only supplier.
This ultra lightweight handheld technology is first mentioned in the media surrounding the Hawaii/Mexico eclipse of 1991.
Despite an array certified safe glasses under $5, there are more expensive options for camera and telescope enthusiasts and professionals. These include many do-it-yourself applications with sheets of material, which can cross into space-age technology with impregnated polymer films and nebula filters.
Baader Planetarium in Munich, Germany makes their own proprietary “AstroSolar” silver and gold film “to attain fine-optical properties necessary for high magnification work.”
So while there are many safe, available, affordable options, they are not all the same.
At the minimum, your solar glasses must meet the “ISO 12312-2 international safety standard” of optical density. It should state so one of the arms.
Turns out, ISO is actually an acronym for a non-governmental organization headquartered Geneva, Switzerland.
From the American Astronomical Society: The International Organization for Standardization, or ISO (an acronym derived from the French version of the name)... composed of members from the national standards bodies of 167 countries.
The U.S. standard is the American National Standards Institute in Washington, D.C.
The ISO standard's “maximum allowable luminous transmittance” corresponds to that of a shade 14 welding filter.
Before cardboard eclipse glasses were so readily available, welding filters were commonly used to view partial phases of solar eclipses.
The ease with which you and your neighbors and children can literally stare at the sun safely is actually quite a phenomenal, and evolutionarily recent achievement of technology buried under the deception of a low price tag.
We have battled white light glare as long as its been there. Amelia Fay, curator at the Manitoba Museum in Canada, wrote that Inuit made something called “ilgaak,” effectively snow goggles made out of organic materials, mainly bone, ivory, and wood. They feature two horizontal slits over the eyes, which greatly reduce ultraviolet glare. Though most artifacts are from the 19th century, the technique is believed to be thousands of years old.
It is widely reported that the first object we would call sunglasses was made around the 12th century in China to hide the reactions of judges. Called “Ai Tai,” meaning dark clouds, they were flat panes of smoky quartz.
Mass produced sunglasses as we know them were introduced by Sam Foster on the beaches of Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1929 through his company Foster Grant.
Truly anti glare lens technology first hit the consumer market after 1936, when Ray Ban designed anti-glare aviator style sunglasses for pilots, using polarized lens technology newly created by Edwin H. Land, founder of the Polaroid Corporation.
Today, Luxottica is the world’s largest sunglasses manufacturer, with a net worth of approximately $90 billion, including a glass manufacturing plant in Lockbourne, Ohio and the headquarters of its North American retail division is in Mason, Ohio.
Pinhole Projector Method, for the D–I-Why in You
So making your own eclipse glasses is not recommended on account of danger and stupidity.
Go figure.
But if you’re bent on getting some crafting in to view this eclipse, there is the old pinhole method.
Also known as a camera obscura, the technique’s earliest recorded history is by a Chinese philosopher called Mo-tzu (or Mozi) in 400BC, when he noted that light passed through a pinhole into a dark room created an inverted image of the original illuminating object.
You effectively create a mini sun on a piece of cardboard through a pinhole in another piece of cardboard.
This method has always been safe because you literally face away from the sun to create it.
Materials Needed:
Two pieces of white cardboard (paper plates can also work)
A pin or a needle
Instructions:
Make a small hole in the center of one piece of cardboard using a pin or needle. This is the “projector.”
Use the second piece of cardboard as a screen where the image of the eclipse will be projected.
To view the eclipse, stand with your back to the sun and hold the pinhole piece so that it catches the sunlight. Position the second piece of cardboard so that it receives the light passing through the pinhole, and is shaded by the first. You will see an inverted image of the sun projected onto the second piece of cardboard. As the moon passes in front of the sun, you can watch the progress of the eclipse on this makeshift screen.
For a clearer image, you can cover the hole in the first piece of cardboard with a small piece of aluminum foil. Tape the foil in place and then poke a hole through the foil. The more defined pinhole creates a more defined image.
First Published March 31, 2024, 1:00 p.m.
