A total solar eclipse will take place at approximately 1:18 p.m. in the St. Louis metropolitan area on Monday, August 21. Wearing protective eyewear is essential to preserving sight.
If you look even for a second or so with unprotected eyes, you could go blind – or at least do irreparable harm to your retinas, MediNurse reminds.
Additionally, they say the solar eclipse can be especially harmful for the elderly because of pre-existing eye health issues that make them more susceptible to total vision loss if they do not take necessary precautions before viewing the eclipse. This includes cataracts, diabetic eye disease, glaucoma, dry eye and age-related macular degeneration.
Eclipse glasses are cheap – a couple of dollars in some stores, free with the purchase of pizza with one chain, and free at area Schnucks locations. Schnucks and the Gateway Arch Park Foundation are having an eclipse party downtown near the Arch from noon until 2 p.m. on August 21.
Experts say to watch only with reputable eclipse glasses that are marked with ISO 12312-2, which means the product met the international safety standard. Also, make sure the glasses or viewers are new, because if they are more than three years old or have bends, wrinkles, scratches or tiny holes in them, they will not protect your eyes.
“The way that you can look to see that these are reputable glasses that will be safe to use is there is going to be two symbols on the back ,” said Anna Green, planetarium manager at the James S. McDonnell Planetarium at the St. Louis Science Center. “One is going to say, ‘ISO’ … it has got a little globe behind it, and the other one is a curved C and a curved E. That is a British standard.”
There is a safe way to put on and take off the eclipse glasses as well. Look down at your toes – put on the glasses, then look up at the sun. To take them off, look down first – then remove the glasses. Never take off the eclipse glasses while you are looking at the sun.
“You can look as long as you want as long as you have those glasses on, but when you are done, you want to look back down at your toes, and then take them back off again,” Green said. “That insures that you are not already in the process of looking up and you look at the sun without those glasses on.”
If you are planning to capture the event by taking photos or videos on your phone or to watch through binoculars, telescopes or other optical devices, they need filters as well, even if you have on eclipse glasses. Optical devices concentrate solar rays and will damage your eclipse glasses or viewer and seriously injure your eyes.
Green also suggests anyone who plans to drive to a site to experience totality should do so the day before, to prevent being stuck in expected heavy traffic on the day of the eclipse. For those who are sticking around St. Louis, there is also an eclipse party in the air conditioning at the Science Center.
“We are having a small event, so people who can’t make it to totality, we hope that you’ll come here and join us, because we will be observing the 99.99 percent partial [eclipse] that we’ll have here safely and we will be helping all of our visitors view it safely,” Green said.
“We will have air conditioning, we will have food and live music and, weather-permitting, the whole thing will be outside. We hope there won’t be bad weather, but we will be doing things inside to celebrate. We have a small team going out to Festus and we will be trying to stream back totality from Festus as well. If that fails, we will also be showing the NASA stream too.”
According to NASA, the last solar eclipse seen from contiguous United States took place on February 26, 1979, and the last one that passed over the St. Louis area took place in 1442.
After the August 21 total solar eclipse, the next annular solar eclipse that can be seen in the continental U.S. will be on October 14, 2023, and visible from Northern California to Florida. Just six months later, on April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse will be visible from Texas to Maine.
For more information, visit https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/ or https://eclipse.aas.org/eye-safety/eyewear-viewers.
NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, offers tips to prevent long-lasting eye damage while viewing the eclipse.
Supervise children who are viewing the eclipse to make sure they are using their solar viewers properly and safely.
The only safe way to look directly at the uneclipsed or partially eclipsed sun is through the special-purpose solar filters – eclipse glasses or hand-held solar viewers.
Homemade filters or ordinary sunglasses, even very dark ones, will not protect your eyes.
Do not look at the uneclipsed or partially eclipsed sun through unfiltered optical devices – even while using eclipse glasses or a hand-held viewer.
Seek expert advice from an astronomer before using a solar filter with a camera, a telescope, binoculars or any other optical device. Solar filters must be attached to the front of any telescope, binoculars, camera lens, or other optics.
If you plan to use welder’s glasses, the only ones that are safe for direct viewing of the Sun with your eyes are those of Shade 12 or higher.
If you normally wear glasses, keep them on and put the solar viewers over them or hold the hand-held viewer in front of them.
Only when the moon completely covers the sun’s bright light when there is total darkness can you remove your solar lenses. Experience totality – but as soon as the sun begins to reappear, your protective solar viewers need to be back on to view the remaining phases of the eclipse.
