As co-host of Thor and Poldi’s Excellent Eclipse Party, I wanted to provide something that might augment Poldi’s gourmet camping meals.  I was inspired by a YouTube presentation of how to enjoy the eclipse, including during the partial phases leading up to totality, and how to safely view the sun during this time (over an hour).  One of the techniques was the use of “pinhole projection”  where a small hole in an opaque panel projects an image of the sun onto a flat surface.  It is an embodiment of a pinhole camera, but aimed at the sun.

In 1963 a solar eclipse crossed North America.  I was living where the eclipse would be 80% full and I recall my dad setting up a pinhole projector so we could watch the progress of the eclipse.  The image showed a small crescent, like the moon.  This left an indelible memory on an impressionable 10-year old, but even more so, was seeing the multitude of crescents projected along the street in front of our house.  The cathedral ceiling of elm trees along the avenue had holes in it, formed by the gaps between the leaves.  Each was its own pinhole and cast a crescent image on the pavement.  This is what left the strongest impression on me that day.

Today I understand the physics and optics of what made those images, but it does not diminish the awe and wonder I have for the effect.  I wanted to see it again at this eclipse, and to that end I designed cardstock pages with holes punched in them for our eclipse partiers to project.  The holes spelled out the name of each guest in a dot-matrix font. 

I considered how to punch all these holes and soon realized that doing this by hand would not work.  I did not have the tools or patience for such a task.  I considered acquiring a laser cutter, but this would be a new technology to me, one that I didn’t have the time to learn.  I contacted a local shop, but was not confident in their response to my request (“we’ll have to experiment to see if this will work”), and it would be expensive. 

Fortunately, as I described the situation to my talented and well-equipped friend Odd Dave, he offered to make them on his laser cutter (of course he had one, and he wanted to keep it in condition by using it).  I sent him a test file, he “printed” it with seemingly little effort, and then proceeded to punch the rest of them.  He mailed them to me with plenty of time to pack them with the other eclipse equipment.

The eclipse partiers were thrilled to receive these custom-punched cards and looked forward to making projections of their names during the partial phases of the eclipse.  Sadly, nearly all of that time was overcast.  One needs a full view of the sun for the projection to be effective.  There were a few openings early in the eclipse, and one might be able to make out the solar disk images with a small “bite” taken out, but the more dramatic projections of thin crescents were clouded out.

I hope they save the “name hole projection” cards for their next eclipse.

Thor and Poldi’s Eclipse Party 2024
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