UCHealth offers safety tips for sky gazers seeking to experience April 8 solar eclipse

Aurora, Colo. (March 28, 2024) – Coloradans will experience a partial solar eclipse on April 8, and eye specialists on the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora want to remind everyone to be extremely careful when putting eyes to the sky, since it can take as little as one to three seconds for the powerful rays of the sun to cause permanent damage. 

“The solar eclipse lasts 1-3 minutes based on location, and bright sunlight can suddenly appear as the moon moves. Even a few seconds of viewing this bright sunlight can cause permanent damage to the retina,” said Dr. Niranjan Manoharan, a specialist at the UCHealth Sue Anschutz-Rodgers Eye Center and an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “Once retina tissue is destroyed it cannot regenerate, and this results in permanent vision loss. Therefore, I recommend always keeping proper eye protection during the entirety of the solar eclipse and not trying to view any portion of the eclipse without proper eye protection.” 

Adds Dr. Marc Mathias, also a retina specialist at the eye center and an associate professor of ophthalmology: “There is no safe amount of time to view the sun without protection.” 

For anyone planning to check out the eclipse, the experts offer the following guidelines: 

1. View the eclipse only with special eclipse sunglasses. 
2. Do not rely on regular sunglasses. They are NOT safe for viewing the eclipse. 
3. Keep eclipse sunglasses on at ALL times during eclipse viewing. 
4. Be sure to provide all children with eclipse sunglasses and be sure they do not remove them when viewing the solar eclipse. 
5. If you experience vision loss after viewing an eclipse, please see your nearest retina specialist for evaluation. 

Mathias adds that people have to be very careful about which eclipse glasses they use. It’s vital to make sure your glasses are stamped with the following code: ISO 12312-2. This indicates they are manufactured to strict international standards and are NASA-approved. The American Astronomical Society has created a list of approved eclipse glasses, viewers and filters. 

“Also, do not view the solar eclipse through binoculars or telescopes,” said Manoharan.  Unfortunately, the damage from solar retinopathy from looking at the sun is often permanent. 

“The retina is an incredible structure in the body, but it doesn’t have the ability to heal itself very well once it has suffered significant injuries,” Mathias said. 

“With more serious injuries, there’s typically not a significant recovery. That’s why we are very, very adamant about educating people. It only takes a few seconds for damage to occur if people are looking at the sun and forget to wear eclipse glasses. It can happen very, very quickly,” he said. 

More about the eclipse and safety tips from UCHealth can be found here.