Thanks for that, Brent. It confirmed my memory of a #13 as recommended. It also made me wonder who on earth would actually smoke a piece of glass, in the 21st century? Rich Tenney showed me a neat little arraingement today. We looked at the sun through a welder's glass held in front of his mini-binoculars (were they 8x25's, Rich?) for a neat view, tinted dark green. I finished the solar filters for my 70mm binos, so we had a look at the sun with them. Rich commented that 15x is just about right for an eclipse, and I tend to agree; I think 20x would be really good too. The face shield would be a welcome option for bino-viewing, that was obvious. My wife and I plan to watch the opening stages of the eclipse from our front yard, while our daughter attends the birthday-party of a friend. When she returns, we just might make a dash to Stansbury for the middle and ending phases. Chuck --- Brent Watson <brentjwatson@yahoo.com> wrote:
After all the conversation about safe filters, I ran across the following article on the Sky and Telescope web site. It states that welders glass from shade 12 to 14 is safe to view eclipses. Please read this article:
http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/sun/article_94_1.asp
The author tests things like floppy disks, CDs and Pop Tart wrappers. Interesting article.
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