Magnifying the Sun's Image

One can magnify the Sun's image by adding a diverging lens to the optical bench. The lens used was -6 diopters and was placed near the focal length of the reading glasses. The screen was moved further away from the lens to where the image was approximately in focus.


The aperture had to be increased with the paper hole punch to make more light available because for the larger image. There were some thin clouds near the Sun at the time the photo was taken which complicated matters somewhat but this shows how one can create a larger image. The combination of the two lenses forms a small Galilean telescope.