As I write this (11:00 AM, South African Time) the sun is under partial eclipse. Of course it's never a good idea to look at the sun directly. It can have a blinding effect as this unfortunate young woman found out.

So how to look at the sun?

There are some definite no-no's. If you want to lose your sight almost instantly then look directly at the sun using a telescope of binoculars. But that's just idiot stuff. Dark sunglasses don't help, and eye specialists have warned against using things like x-ray images and film negatives.

Less dangerous methods are to look though welding goggles or a double layer of the thin foil that wraps tea. But even here, looking at the sun must be done for a few seconds at most. I read that a safe way is to look at the sun's reflection in a bucket of water. Well, I tried that and I am still suffering the after-effects. So don't try this!

The old pin-hole trick

Obviously, avoiding looking at the sun directly is the smartest move. The simplest way is to punch a small hole in a piece of paper and then project the sunbeam onto another piece of paper - the reveresed image of the crescent sun is displayed. Here is the image of today's eclipse, through the pin-hole:

The coolest pin-hole

I heard someone mention an alternative way to get pin-hole images, and it turns out to be the coolest way. Here's the trick: stand under a tree with dappled bits of light shining through the leaves. You should see many of the the crescent shapes of the sun on the ground. Then stand under the tree in a white shirt and take a selfie with the eclipsing sun images. Like I did:

It might look a bit of a mess but if you look carefully you can see the many crescents reflected on the shirt. Way cool!