A Little Backyard Science

Take one sheet of Thousand Oaks Solar Film, 6" square.  Add one empty box from Hefty Zip Loc bags.  Mix in appropriate use of scissors, tape and rubber bands... 

and the C90 spotting scope I use at the rifle range becomes a solar scope.  (This is before final assembly, and the final version looks a little better.)  Also, the picture is framed wrong because you can't see that I put another square of the solar filter over the finder with rubber bands so that's eye safe.  

Finally, use that photographic tripod and point at the sun.  Focus the Craptastic Point and Shoot Ricoh camera at the eyepiece, and let it autofocus. 

As the French say, "easy peasey"  (no, wait... that's not the French...) 

It shouldn't be a surprise that the guy who wrote about the coming eclipse a year ago is going to try to see it.  If money is no object, well, I probably wouldn't do half the things I do, but in this case I'd be going to eastern Oregon or possibly somewhere from east of the Cascades through easternmost Wyoming.  It looks like we have about 60% chance of good enough weather to see it in our budget trip.   

Posting will be erratic or non-existent, but I'll have internet access.  So if the weather turns on us and everything sucks, we'll try to find someone streaming it online.