|
Many ask Dr. Nina Goyal, president of the Illinois Society of
Eye Physicians and Surgeons, if looking directly at the eclipse
can make a person blind.
“Yes, it can,” she said. “It can take as little as a minute to
create a thermal burn on the retina. And you won’t even feel
it.”
She said the retina is a sheet of nerves that allows you to see.
A burn on retinal tissue damages a person’s vision for life.
After the 2017 eclipse, one New York patient who looked directly
up at the eclipse with no eye protection said they did not feel
anything. A few days later, however, she developed a blind spot
in the center of her vision. Her doctor reported that the burn
to her retina fit the outline of the crescent created by the
solar eclipse.
Life with a blind spot in the central part of your vision means
no more recognizing the faces of loved ones, no more reading, no
more driving, and no more using computers.
Goyal and her husband are both ophthalmologists. They ordered
ISO 12312-2 certified eclipse glasses directly from the
manufacturer, the recommended option, for their family. But
Goyal won’t be using them to view the eclipse.
With her back to the sun, she’ll be holding her trusty kitchen
colander or spaghetti drainer, the kind with big holes, not
mesh, to watch the eclipse shadow on a piece of white paper on
the ground. The colander acts as a pinhole projector, creating
many eclipse shadows.
“That’s an indirect viewing. All eye surgeons and
ophthalmologists will always be in favor of that,” she said.
“You get the fun of the viewing. You get that ellipsoid shape
that decreases as the eclipse goes on, but you are not getting
any of the UV rays.”
Another warning that Goyal wants everyone to be aware of is not
to use a smartphone, a camera or a telescope to view the eclipse
unless you use the recommended professional filters to protect
your eyes.
“With a camera, you are still getting the UV light. In fact, it
is actually magnified and even stronger,” she said.
Keep in mind that children's eyes are much more vulnerable to UV
eclipse rays than adults' eyes are, she said. Parents need to
supervise their children when they are using eclipse glasses. If
a school is holding a group eclipse viewing, parents should
consider being on hand at school to help the teachers, she said.
At home, kids enjoy making NASA-recommended pinhole viewers out
of cereal boxes. Or they can grab a kitchen colander.
The eclipse is expected to begin Monday at approximately 1:59
p.m.
|
|
