A total solar eclipse will be visible to millions of people across parts of Greenland, Iceland, northern Russia, Spain, and Portugal on August 12. To watch the eclipse safely, locate a pair of certified ISO 12312-2 compliant eclipse glasses or use a handheld solar viewer.
Safety Precautions
Directly staring at the sun can result in blindness or disrupted vision. The only time it’s safe to view the sun without eye protection is during the totality of a total solar eclipse, or the brief moments when the moon completely blocks the light of the sun.
Sunglasses won’t work in place of eclipse glasses or solar viewers, which are 100,000 times darker and held to an international safety standard. While sunglasses can protect our eyes from harmful UV rays during everyday activities, they are not intended for use when looking directly at the sun.
Alternative Viewing Methods
If you don’t have certified glasses on hand, eclipses can also be viewed indirectly using a pinhole projector, such as a hole punched through an index card. These work when you stand with your back to the sun and hold up the card. The pinhole projects an image of the crescent or ring-shaped sun on the ground or other surfaces.
Original reporting: KRDO (Colorado Springs metro) — read the source article.
