Under the same Sun
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The passage of the sun traces a luminous trail in the sky every day, which our hasty lives are unable to grasp. What if we left a camera facing the sky with the shutter open for a month? Is it possible to see changes in the apparent trajectory of the sun day after day? How are solar traces captured?
We have involved schools and people from all over Italy and the countries of the Mediterranean basin and we are collecting the signs of our star at different latitudes and longitudes. Explore the interactive map and you will find the photographs taken by the project participants!
"Solar cans", or rather solar cans, are simple cameras built using tin boxes or cans as a casing, from which their name derives. These devices use the camera obscura principle to capture images of the sun and its movements over time.
Senes involved
The operation of solar cans is quite simple: a small hole is made on one side of the tin box, through which sunlight can enter and form an image inside the box. This image is projected onto the inside of the opposite wall, where it is recorded onto a sheet of photographic paper or photosensitive material.
Because the hole is very small, sunlight passing through it projects an inverted, upside-down image of the outside. This phenomenon is similar to what occurs in a traditional darkroom. The images captured by solar cans may vary depending on exposure time and lighting conditions. They can be used to observe and study phenomena such as solar eclipses, the apparent motion of the sun over the seasons and other astronomical variations in the daytime sky.
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