• Question: How can you look at the sun through a telescope without hurting your eyes?

    Asked by Alex and Robert to Tim on 8 Mar 2018. This question was also asked by 547spdm26.
    • Photo: Tim Duckenfield

      Tim Duckenfield answered on 8 Mar 2018:


      The telescope has a special “filter”, which means it only lets through a tiny amount of the light that hits the telescope. All this light is roughly the same colour too, so if you ever get a chance to look through my “H-alpha” telescope at the Sun, it looks red. That is because it is only letting through a little bit of the red light, to protect our eyes.

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