Be Smart: A partial eclipse can fry Your Naked Eyes

The day of the long-awaited coast-to-coast solar eclipse has all but arrived — and if history is any guide, it's likely that somebody's eyes are going to get hurt.

"The ones we're really concerned about are the people who have never seen an eclipse before — or just decided that, you know, 'Today is a nice day to go take a look at a solar eclipse' — and, 'Oh, I probably don't need to do very much to get ready to do that.' Then I get worried," says Ralph Chou, an optometrist and vision scientist at the University of Waterloo in Canada. He has seen 18 total solar eclipses.

You really can get blurred vision or blind spots after watching partial eclipses without protection, says Chou, even if there is just a tiny little crescent of sun left in the sky.

The risk of injury to the retina is even greater if you look at a partial eclipse without protection through a telescope or binoculars, Chou warns.

"The damage," he says, "can happen extremely quickly."

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