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The Great American Eclipse™ is happening today. If you, against all odds, forgot, we’ve got you covered with some handy quick prints to view it safely.

When you take a moment from your life today to furtively glance at the sun before remembering that actually, no, that’s a terrible idea, consider that a 3D printed paddle with a small hole will demonstrate this brief absence of the sun as well as protect your eyes and give you another reason to prove to yourself and your loved ones that your 3D printer was a worthwhile purchase.

Creating your own would be a matter of seconds in Tinkercad, but we’ve saved you the effort with our own unscientific 10-minute paddle*. It’s a quick print with a variety of pinhole sizes for your rangefinding ease of use. However, if our four pinholes aren’t enough for you, the Eclipse Pinhole Projector Paddle by 3DSpace on MakerWorld has 61.

Hold either paddle out in strong sunlight and look at the projection of the partial phase of the eclipse – the moon passing from the edge to the center and from the center out to the edge of the sun – that it casts. Then, put it in the junk drawer in your kitchen and forget about it. The next solar eclipse to be viewable in the contiguous United States will not appear until 2044.

*It's just a name. May take longer than 10 minutes to print.

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License: The text of "See the Great American Eclipse in Style With a Quick 3D Printable Pinhole Viewer" by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.