PLEASE NOTE - Eclipse2024.org and eclipse2017.org provide glasses that are made by the same REPUTABLE companies: Rainbow Symphony and American Paper Optics. Everything you read below about eclipse2017.org applies equally to eclipse2024.org! (From just before the 2017 eclipse): We are getting the question about safety a lot, now that the news media has come out with lots of stories about counterfeit or knockoff brand glasses, and the dangers of using...
This is a biggie. You CANNOT look at the Sun while ANY PART of its bright disk is still visible. The moon does cover quite a bit of it during the partial phases leading up to totality, but you HAVE to use special solar viewing glasses (also called "eclipse glasses") to look at it during the partial phases. You MUST use these glasses to look at the sun during this...
Here is the straight scoop on what the glasses actually do. You cannot look directly at the Sun, because even if it is covered up 99.9%, you will blind yourself due to the harmful UV rays it puts out. This is true whether or not an eclipse is happening. Normally, we don’t look at the Sun, because there’s no reason to, and because we’re conditioned not to – it’s too...
NO! NO! NO! These cheap "filters" are manufactured and marketed as being able to be inserted into the eyepiece. That means that by the time the Sun's dangerous rays get to the filter, they have been magnified by your telescope, and are being focused directly on that filter. The cheap glass cannot take all that thermal energy, and it WILL crack! If you are looking through the scope when...
Yes, you can certainly put them over regular eyeglasses, as I myself do! The reality is that these "eclipse glasses" are really solar filters, and are designed to be used for only a brief time, as you glance at the partial phases to check on the progress of the eclipse - and be able to actually participate in the excitement as the partial phase grows - toward totality! People will...
Why are they called "eclipse glasses"? Do you need them if you're in the path? What about if you're not in the path? (You WILL need them - get them now!) To answer these questions, we need to tell you some important things about total solar eclipses. FIRST, please go to the page that hosts the 2017 instructions for watching an eclipse, and read them - you have a few...
Great question! The eclipse glasses contain a very special filter material that is ISO certified to be completely safe for direct solar viewing. So, as long as that material remains undamaged, you could use the glasses to look safely at the Sun anytime you wanted to. It's not fantastically exciting to do that when there's not an eclipse going on, though, unless: (1) There are HUGE sunspots to be seen...
