Happy Hidden Sun Day

Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 23437 – 1202

Here’s the haps:

So, in this challenge, you are allowed to take Sunday off, which you would think should allow a person to catch up or get a little ahead. Ha! They don’t know me vewy well. But since today is the solar eclipse and the last one for twenty years I think today’s words, hidden and helioscope are very appropriate although I couldn’t have planned it better.

A helioscope is an instrument that was created by Benedetto Castelli, a student of Galileo for the purpose of studying sunspots. Apparently even back in the 16th Century they learned that you couldn’t look at the sun directly or you would go blind. They devised an apparatus that inverted a telescope and projected the light onto a piece of paper which they could trace and draw. Galileo’s idea was that sunspots physically on the surface of the sun itself. A person named Christoph Scheiner didn’t agree and said that they were probably more equivalent to cloud cover. He perfected the device further in an attempt to provide better proof. In the end of the argument Galileo proved his point mathematically and Scheiner eventually agreed. The device reminded me of the pinhole cameras we made as kids for the purpose of viewing an eclipse. Back then there were no glasses safe enough to look at the sun directly.

But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.

(Malachi 4:2 KJV)