Inexpensive Homemade Safe Solar Viewers for Sunspot Monitoring and Solar Eclipse Viewing

Using simple inexpensive optics, anyone can make a projection viewer for the safe observation of the partial phases of a solar eclipse. This paper reports on the various safe solar viewers (SSV) constructed at the College of Charleston, Charleston, SC and the Collier County Public Schools, Naples, FL over the last twenty years. A 1-lens SSV using reading glass lenses can project a bright 1-2 cm image of the Sun and is a dramatic improvement on the pinhole projector. A 2-lens SSV using surplus optics can produce a solar image 10 cm across. The most recent design uses $12.50 in optics, is constructed of cardboard, and has image quality equal to the solar projection viewers sold to schools for hundreds of dollars.