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---
title: How To Build Your Own Solar Viewer  | TIME
description: TIME For Kids reporter Caroline Curran learns from NASA Solar Eclipse Educator Charles Fulco about how to build a solar eclipse viewer with supplies you can find in your home. 
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og:title: How To Build Your Own Solar Viewer 
og:description: TIME For Kids reporter Caroline Curran learns from NASA Solar Eclipse Educator Charles Fulco about how to build a solar eclipse viewer with supplies you can find in your home. 
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twitter:title: How To Build Your Own Solar Viewer 
twitter:description: TIME For Kids reporter Caroline Curran learns from NASA Solar Eclipse Educator Charles Fulco about how to build a solar eclipse viewer with supplies you can find in your home. 
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# How To Build Your Own Solar Viewer

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<!-- video src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/5AZPq56Y.m3u8" -->
## Video: How To Build Your Own Solar Viewer

[Watch (HLS stream): How To Build Your Own Solar Viewer](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/5AZPq56Y.m3u8) (2:35)

![How To Build Your Own Solar Viewer](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/5AZPq56Y/poster.jpg?width=720)

_Published 2017-08-03. TIME For Kids reporter Caroline Curran learns from NASA Solar Eclipse Educator Charles Fulco about how to build a solar eclipse viewer with supplies you can find in your home._


---

Jul 27, 2023 10:23 PM UTC

---

## More From This Series

[All Videos](https://time.com/video/)

[What Is An Annular Solar Eclipse?](/video/sjwU847L/)

### What Is An Annular Solar Eclipse?

[Solar Eclipse Vocabulary](/video/4KCHqOXl/)

### Solar Eclipse Vocabulary

[Watch The Solar Eclipse](/video/i904Q64p/)

### Watch The Solar Eclipse

---


## Transcript

Hi. I'm Time for Kids reporter Caroline Curran. Today I'm joined by Charles Fulco, NASA Solar Eclipse Educator. Thank you for joining us today. And thanks for having me here Carolyn. So we all know you're not supposed to look directly at the sun, even when the moon is in front of it. So how do you enjoy the solar eclipse safely? I'm gonna show you, and the folks at home, how to make a solar viewer out of very simple materials you can either. Purchase, or you probably have around the house. A little bit of foil, a hobby knife, which some kids may want to have their parents help them with. A dry erase or a permanent marker.

And this is a tool called and awl, and this is used specifically to make holes in things. A little bit of tape. And of course, your very own safety goggles. So you're gonna turn a regular old shipping tube that you could pick up at a postal center, into a solar viewer. And what I like about this solar viewer is you don't even look in the direction of the sun. So there's no chance of anyone hurting their eyes. So, here's a plain shipping tube. We're going to put a hole in the front of this first. And, you don't want to make it a very large hole because the larger the hole, the fuzzier the image.

So, let's take a hobby knife, put your goggles on. Give it a pop. Good, the rougher your edges the worst the image is gonna look. So what we do is we put foil over it to smooth out the image. So take some of the tape, I'm gonna put the foil here, tape the bottom, and then tape the side here on the top. So when you put a hole through the foil what you're going to do now you can see what a nice smooth round hole you're gonna get. Put it straight through and pull it right back out. Good. Now we're gonna go cut a window out in the side and the viewing window is going to let you look into the tube to see the image of the sun.

Formed at the rear of the tube, so let's take the knife again and just cut along those dotted lines and make yourself a nice little rectangle here. Now you are all ready to do the sun. If it were a nice sunny day outside you'd put this over your shoulder and you want to put the front of the tube that lets the light in facing the sun to make sure it's aimed at the sun without looking at it. You wanna watch for the shadow on the ground, so it should like a perfect triangle on the ground, as you do that, also look inside and you should see a bright light image of the sun suddenly appear at the very end of the tube, right here.

This is the best and the safest way to view a partial eclipse of sun without hurting your eyes. Well, thank you so much. You're welcome. [ MUSIC ]

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