'Fried-eye’ warning

Press, 19 October 1976, Page 5

'Fried-eye’ warning

IT People will be blinded, or will have their eyes irreparably damaged, if they attempt to look at the partial lunar eclipse of the . sun on Saturday without approved optical aids.

“It is imperative that people do not try to look at the sun through binoculars or telescopes. Their eyes will be burnt — like a fried egg,” said Mr Frank Andrews, president of the Canterbury Astronomical Society.

“Approved arc-welding glasses — not gas-welding glasses — would be a reasonably safe method of looking at the eclipse.” he said. However, even these were not perfectly safe, because it was impossible to tell if people were using the glasses in an approved way.

Smoked glass or blackened negative film was totally unsafe to look through, said Mr Andrews. He emphasised that negative film should not under any circumstances be put in front

of a telescope or binocular lens, because it would not cut out sufficient light.

“Nor can you put it between your eye and the instrument’s eye-piece. The sun’s magnified rays would burn it in seconds. The damage would be almost instantaneous.” Mr Andrews said that whenever there was an eclipse, either partial or total, there were cases of people being either blinded or suffering severe eye-burns from gazing at the sun. The eclipse, he said, would be total only in Australia. Christchurch people would probably not notice any real difference in the light. “A photographer might have to change an f stop, but that is all,” he said.

Perhaps the best solution to people wanting to see the eclipse, said Mr Andrews, was to use a piece of cardboard with a pin-hole through it, using the hole to project the image of the eclipse on a white surface. “That method is all right—-

unless people try to look through the pin-hole — many people have been blinded by doing that”

A Christchurch optician, Dr Hori Collett, said last evening that Australian authorities had been issuing warnings for several weeks in the hope of avoiding eye damage there. If people insisted in watching the eclipse, he said, their central vision would be affected first, then their peripheral vision. “If you watched the sun with the naked eye, the nerves in the retina would be burnt, killing that section of the eye.” The next total eclipse of the sun, visible to New Zealanders, would not be until three decades into the next century, said Mr Andrews. The last total eclipse visible in New Zealand was in 1965.

The partial eclipse which will be visible in Christchurch for several hours on Saturday afternoon, was of no particular interest to New Zealand astronomers.