Look (safely) to the east this Saturday at sunrise for a sight that captured hearts and minds last April: a partial solar eclipse. Yes, the celestial bodies are at it again.
Just as the sun is rising on Saturday, March 29, the moon will pass between the sun and Earth, turning the sun into a tiny glowing crescent shape that will grow into a larger crescent as the moon moves across it.
This time, there’s no path of totality—or perfect alignment between the three orbs causing night-like darkness—as there was last April. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t fun viewing.
In Halifax, the sun will start to be visibly eclipsed at 7am, just as it’s rising on the eastern horizon. It will peak at 7:17am and will be fully unobscured by 8:12am. Be sure to have a clear view of the eastern horizon by getting on top of a hill or somewhere near the water without obstruction. Check the eclipse’s time and visibility here, depending on where you live.
Remember, it’s not safe to stare directly at the sun with sunglasses, or to stare at the sun through a reflective surface, like a phone screen.
You can do it safely in a few ways: either with specialty-rated eclipse glasses or indirectly by projecting the sun’s image onto another surface. Tiffany Fields is the technician at the Burke Gaffney Observatory at Saint Mary’s University. She put together a safety know-how for eclipse watching last year that’s relevant for any sun-gazers.
First, on looking through glasses.
Only some are safe to look directly at the sun through, and these are SO 12312-2 compliant eclipse glasses, which are 1000 times darker than regular sunglasses. If you didn’t hold on to an undamaged pair from last April, SMU unfortunately doesn’t have any left over but there might still be time to shop for a pair online at vendors Fields suggests. (Fields has not had any luck tracking pairs down through local vendors).
Second, project!
You can make a pinhole camera for safe indirect viewing by standing with your back to the sun and looking at shadows or images projected on the ground or another surface as the sunlight passes through it. Fields was interviewed by The Weather Network last year about how to make a pinhole viewer to watch the eclipse using a cereal box here.
Pinhole viewers can also be made by poking a tiny hole in a piece of paper and holding that between the sun and the ground, while, again, standing with your back to the sun and looking down. As Fields wrote last year, “during a ‘normal day,’ the image projected onto the ground of the sun will be a simple circle, as our sun looks like a circle in the sky in our day-to-day lives.” However, during a solar eclipse, as the moon passes in front of the sun, the projected image “will reveal the changing crescent-shape of the sun over time.”
Third, get creative and make a pinhole camera with what you already have!
For example, your hands. “Ball your hand into a fist with just a small hole left open” to project the image, she writes, or “make a criss-cross pattern with your hands so that there’s only small openings between your fingers, like a waffle pattern.” A pasta strainer with small holes works too. So does a leafy tree for observing the changing shadows on the ground. Even a Ritz cracker works.
“Anything with small holes in it works perfectly,” she says. “Then you don’t need to worry about where those eclipse glasses went, right, or if you tossed them because there’s still ways to safely see the eclipse by not putting your eyeballs directly on the sun.” Don’t do this, people. Don’t put eyeballs on the sun.
Remember, with any pinhole projector, never point it at the sun. Always use it to observe the sun’s image or shadows projected on the ground or another surface.
Here is another video from John Read at Learn to Stargaze about making a pinhole projector out of a shoebox.
Fields tells The Coast that Saturday’s partial eclipse will look “really similar to what Halifax saw last April, when the total solar eclipse passed through much of North America and the path of totality went through New Brunswick.” Last April, most of Nova Scotia experienced the partial solar eclipse in the middle of the afternoon. SMU held a watch party on their football field and gave out boxes and boxes of eclipse glasses.
This year, says Fields, because the partial eclipse is happening right at sunrise, “if you don’t know it’s happening, you might totally miss it.” One, not everyone is up at 7am. Two, because the sun isn’t fully visible and bright, its obscuration by the moon won’t have the same noticeably darkening effect as it did last year.
Fields plans to take in the sights on Saturday “if the skies are clear or partially clear” and reminds anybody trying to view it that they’ll need a good view of the eastern horizon. “If trees or buildings are in your way, blocking the eastern horizon, you’ll miss quite a bit of it.”
And why get up that early? “It’s just so fun to see the shape of the sun change,” says Fields, who acknowledges she might be biased as astronomy is her day job. Also, she concedes, “I’m a big fan of the moon. I know a lot of astronomers feel certain ways about the moon, but I love seeing the moon in the sky.”
Early this month, on March 14, there was a total lunar eclipse which peaked just before 4am.
“It’s so neat to put that into perspective,” says Fields, “and to know ‘I am on this giant rock floating in space that happens to line up perfectly every so often with these other celestial bodies to have these really cool things happen.” She also loves the experience of sharing this feeling with others.
She remembers the morning after the lunar eclipse, when she saw photos of the red moon online, shared her own with friends and coworkers, and asked people, “Did you see it?”
Fields says, “I love that community aspect, and I expect the same thing with this partial solar eclipse. I expect when I see friends later in the day, or coworkers again on Monday, I will be asking, ‘Did you see it? Did you have your eclipse glasses? Did you look at it like on the ground? And that’s one of my favorite parts.”
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This article appears in Mar 1-31, 2025.