[Mike McGavin]

For those of you who are out tramping from Waitangi Day and likely to miss all the Wednesday night media releases, make a note that there’s a partial eclipse of the Sun visible from all over New Zealand, late in the afternoon of Thursday 6th Feb. The Sun’s so bright in the first place that even being 60% covered by the Moon is unlikely to make the world look perceptibly darker than usual, but there are other ways to watch for it.

The exact time varies depending on the part of the country, but there’s some more detailed info at http://www.rasnz.org.nz/Events2008.htm — the maximum phase of the eclipse is somewhere between 5.30pm and 6pm for the entire country.

You *definitely* don’t want to look through binoculars or any other kind of magnifying lens at this (or even stare at it) or you’ll wreck your eyes, but if you have a small pair of binoculars with you, you could probably still see the chunk cut out of the Sun by projecting the image onto something else. You can do this by aiming the big lens towards the Sun and the smaller eyepiece end towards something else (white paper is generally good)… and the easiest way to do this without looking through them is to use the shadow of the binoculars. … and Smokey Bear says try to avoid starting a forest fire.

If you’re concerned about weight, you could maybe just prick a hole in some paper or cardboard and try and get that to work for projecting a picture of the Sun. Aluminised Mylar is also very light-weight and can sometimes be used to look through as a solar filter if you happen to have any lying around. That’s like a lot of the silver anti-static packaging that computer bits sometimes come in, but it comes in varying quality so it might be worth doing some research before just taking it.

Oh, and none of this will work if you’re caught in a blizzard.

Or you could just ignore the whole thing and enjoy your campfire.

Enjoy.
Mike.

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