Published on Sep 05, 2023
Aim:
To make a simple apparatus to view sunspots without harming your eyes.
Materials required:
A sheet of white paper.
A telescope or if telescope is not available, a shoe box with a hole on one of the ends.
1. Hold the white sheet of paper in your hand or clip it onto a clipboard.
2. Point the objective lens of the telescope towards the sun and the eyepiece towards the sheet of paper so that you get a circular image of the sun on the paper.
3. Adjust the focusing knob on the telescope to get a sharp image.
4. Observe and see if you can see dark spots on the bright disc like image of the sun. You may have to do the experiment on several days to see these spots.
5. If you do not have a telescope available, simply make a hole in one end of a shoe box and face the side with the hole towards the sun so that the image of the sun falls on the opposite side of the shoebox.
The sun is not uniformly of the same temperature. Some spots on the sun are cooler than the rest of the sun. These spots are called sunspots. Since the sun is so intensely bright, we cannot look on it with our naked eye and distinguish these spots.
However when you use the telescope or shoebox pin hole to project the image of the sun onto a white sheet of paper, you can see these spots as black spots.
You may have to do the experiment on several days because sunspots are not constant. On some days there may be no sunspots visible at all.
