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Comment by acegopher | Hacker News Reader

I believe it was done by projection onto a wall or screen, for example through a pinhole projection, rather than looking through a lens directly.

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I, and many others, learned a lot about the sun when during the last solar eclipse.

I held a spice shaker lid (ie a disc with several round holes) into the sun and observed several crescent-shaped shadows on the ground [0]. It turns out the light that passes through the holes is a projection of the sun, which is kinda a neat realization. It was pretty unintuitive before I saw this, so I’m impressed by the 17th century astronomers.

Anyone who was near a tree during the eclipse saw that, too. The effect was very clear in spots of light passing through leaves. Definitely weird to see.

Check this out: https://youtu.be/X9_6EbucCPQ

Cover your windows with opaque garbage bags, cut a small hole into one (<1in), and voila! Camera obscura!

Weird, but wonderful. I laid down a large (butcher paper) white sheet under a tree and took a picture. Much later on, I took that same picture and a pencil I had at the time, and projected the picture back onto the butcher paper and traced the picture back onto it. Pretty cool art!

I first discovered this for myself as a child when walking along a tree-lined path during the solar eclipse and seeing that the sunlight through the trees was crescent-shaped! Looking online, lots of people saw this too!

I was in Kentucky for the eclipse in 2017. I was looking around for a pin and some paper to do that, before I realized I was wearing a straw hat. It's a pinhole projector factory.

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