Hello

The total solar eclipse on 4/8/2024 is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I hope everyone remembers to protect your eyes. The macula is responsible for your central, precise vision, and when viewing a total solar eclipse, strong sunlight can affect your vision within minutes or even seconds, causing temporary or permanent damage or even blindness. Because there are no pain receptors in the retina, there is no pain, so you will not feel pain even if your vision decreases.

For this reason, Dr. Lin Wang Optometrist Eye Clinic’s friendly reminder is as follows:

1) Do not look directly at the sun with naked eyes, if you normally wear eyeglasses, wear your eclipse glasses over them.

2) Do not view a total solar eclipse directly with the naked eye through an unprotected camera lens or telescope.

3) When you wearing the solar eclipse glasses, do not look directly through the lens of a camera or telescope with your naked eyes. If the light is too strong it will focus through the lens, burn out the filter and damage your eyes.

4) Children must be supervised by parents or teachers when watching the solar eclipse.

5) Use protective glasses to watch a) Please use qualified protective glasses (mainly able to filter ultraviolet, infrared and strong visible light): in compliance with the ISO12312-2 label, the Toronto Public Library distributes some protective glasses, please refer to Solar Eclipse Across America https://eclipse.aas.org/eye-safety/viewers-filters website to find reliable suppliers. b) Welding protective glasses, lens #14.

Ordinary sunglasses are far from enough. Qualified solar eclipse glasses are more than 1,000 times darker than ordinary sunglasses.

Please wear solar eclipse protective glasses at all times when viewing the solar eclipse.

6) If you don’t use protective glasses to watch the total solar eclipse, a) you can follow Solar Eclipse Across America or the NASA websites where teach you how to make a pinhole camera or projector, which can help us see the solar eclipse totality indirectly. b) If you missed it, you can also watch it through NASA, U of T Astronomy Department, TV stations and the Internet. https://www.dunlap.utoronto.ca/public-outreach/eclipse-2024/

        I hope everyone will take preventive measures first. If your eyes are unfortunately injured by the sun, you need to seek medical attention immediately. Some experts reminded and statistics show that car accidents increased by 31% after watching the total solar eclipse. We would like to remind everyone to drive safely.