Seeing the little things around you

It’s amazing how much marvelousness we humans miss while focused on our daily routines. This is why it’s always so heartening when somebody does pay attention and discovers something noteworthy like how you can study sunspots from inside New York’s Grand Central terminal.

The southern wall of the Grand Concourse, facing 42nd Street, has semicircular grills high up, with small curlicued spaces like those in a leafy tree. Many of those spaces act like the aperture of a pinhole camera, reflecting an image of the sun that, when it reaches the floor, will be 8 to 12 inches wide. The smaller grill spaces will produce dimmer but sharper solar images on your paper.