Tomcat Management Want Your Eyes To Be Safe By Harry Ballsonue
On August 21 there will be a total eclipse of the sun, DO NOT LOOK UP…you need special glasses, make sure your children, your parents and you are safe, is the message from Stevo, who is on the Health and Safety committee of the Windsor Tomcats. He brings the following article to everyone’s attention.
“I read that even animals go silent during this period of time”. Stevo said.
During the Great American Total Solar Eclipse on Aug. 21, millions of people will gaze at the sun to see the moon slowly pass in front of it, blocking out the light. But those who aren’t careful risk doing some nasty damage to their eyes.
You’ve probably been told that it isn’t safe to stare at the sun and that watching a solar eclipse without proper eye protection can make you go blind. That’s because the light from the sun is so intense that it can literally burn your eyeballs — even during a solar eclipse, when part of the sun’s disk is still visible.
Even the tiniest sliver of a crescent sun peeking out from behind the moon emits enough light to scorch your eyes, Ralph Chou, professor emeritus at the School of Optometry & Vision Science at the University of Waterloo in Canada, told Space.com. “I have seen instances where the patient has eventually shown up with crescents burned into the back of the eye, and you can almost tell exactly when they looked.”
You actually can safely look at a total solar eclipse while the sun is _totally_ blocked by the moon. It looks like the moon has a fiery white aura, and it is one of the more spectacular things I have ever seen.So why do people say it’s dangerous to look at a solar eclipse? Well, in general (during non-eclipse times), you’ve probably been told not to stare at the sun. This is because the sun simply outputs more power than our eye is designed to handle, and exposing our eye to that kind of power can damage the retina. And in a nutshell, solar eclipses are dangerous because the sun can come out from behind the moon and “surprise you” before you have a chance to look away. And this is actually even worse than when you normally look away from the sun because during the total eclipse, it is dark out, and your pupil therefore dialates so that it can let in enough light to get a good picture. Then, when the sun reappears and starts flooding the area with really bright light, not only are you staring straight at it, but your eye is in a state where it is wide open, and actively trying to let in as much light as possible.
This explains why it is easy to damage your eye when watching a total solar eclipse, and why you should either be sure to time it very carefully (and allow for a good margin of error), or just view the thing through one of those sets of cheap “dark” glasses they sell for the express purpose of looking at the sun without getting hurt.
Or as Stevo says, ‘maybe just don’t look up’.
This is first serious article that I have written for the blog, so, well….do you think I can put my Harry Ballsonue.
Windsor Tomcats 