I was very young the last time I recall there was an eclipse. I remember all the warnings about going blind if you looked directly at it. The solution was to poke a hole in the top of a piece of cardboard and see the eclipse through that. Problem was, it looked a lot like a hole in a piece of cardboard. Never heard of one person going blind.

This pooch isn't risking solar retinopathy.

 

Who is our times' William Miller?

 

Harold Camping was certainly a candidate. I think he went to meet the Lord(or someone) about four years ago.

Wow. So many typos in my two posts. My apologies. Hope that they made sense.

Wow. So many typos in my two posts. My apologies. Hope that they made sense.

 

No prob. We all have those typos. They were good posts.

Wow. So many typos in my two posts. My apologies. Hope that they made sense.

 

Passion often gets in the way of proper editing. You get a pass.

Total eclipses, comets, meteor showers, etc... always provide the crazies with a forum to scare people with their "end of times" prognostications.

Someone posted a video on Facebook a few days ago of a fellow who goes by the name Pastor Troy Brewer who was featured speaking to his audience about how this eclipse is a sign from God and he named several reasons why. The strangeness seem to emerge from the shadows when big natural publicity events like this occur.

If cavemen stared at an eclipse thousands of years ago there would have been a lot of cavemen and women in the eclipse path with major vision problems. They would have eyesight damage just like people living in 2017. The sun's intensity and brightest was the same then as now.

Damage to the eyes from sun exposure can take two forms: short-term damage and long-term damage. Short-term damage ("solar retinopathy") occurs when a person stares directly at the sun, and is a result of too much ultraviolet light flooding the retina. In extreme cases this can cause blindness, but is so painfull that it is rare for someone to be able to stare at the sun for that long. Typically, eye damage from staring at the sun results in blurred vision, dark or yellow spots, pain in bright light or loss of vision in the center of the eye (the fovea). Permanent damage to the retina has been shown to occur in ~100 seconds, but the exact time before damage occurs will vary with the intensity of the sun on a particular day (clouds and haze can weaken the sun's rays) and with how much the viewer's pupil is dilated (decongestants and other drugs will dilate pupils). Obviously, no one has done a study to measure the exact time before damage or blindness occurs, but doctors collect information after events like the 1999 solar eclipse, when people who stared directly at the sun for several minutes went to see their doctor. In one study, about half had permanent damage. Short-term damage can be easily prevented: never look directly at the sun. During sunsets, when the intensity of ultraviolet light is lower due to scattering, avoid looking directly at the sun for more than a few minutes at a time. Sunglasses and camera filters do not prevent short-term damage, and may make it more likely by dilating your pupil and/or allowing you to stare at the sun longer without pain.

 

 

Long-term damage is also caused by the effects of ultraviolet light, and can result in cataracts (cloudy spots on the eye lens), corneal sunburn and growths on the surface of the eye. This type of damage can be the result of a lifetime of sun exposure, and the effects usually don't show up until people are in their 50's or later. Long-term damage is harder to prevent, especially in people who spend a lot of time outside. The best prevention is to wear sunglasses that block UV light (both UVA and UVB).

 

Thanks man...that's a seriously awesome breakdown....

 

...While reading it I couldn't help but to think of that girl that we discussed about a month or so ago who identified as being blind, and tried like hell to ruin her eyes by looking at the sun, and ultimately having Drano poured in them by her "psychologist"... but of course that's a different topic all together. .. but Wow sister are you for real?

 

I can't stand driving around sunset time with that intense blinding sun...I don't know why it took me this long to figure it out, but finally I now schedule activities purposely to be after it has set... Sometimes depending on your direction it's just ridiculously dangerous to even try, but day after day thousands are out there driving right into it.

 

That thang is something else. Can't live without it, but holy hell is it ever powerful?

9:00 am flight tomorrow heading to LAX. Should I be fighting for a window seat on the left side of the plane?

Seems like an easy thing to do would be to just aim your phone in the direction of the sun and take a video to watch later. Might not have the sun perfectly centered but I would think that you could probably get a pretty good video just aiming in the general direction of the sun without having to directly look at it.

Someone posted a video on Facebook a few days ago of a fellow who goes by the name Pastor Troy Brewer who was featured speaking to his audience about how this eclipse is a sign from God and he named several reasons why. The strangeness seem to emerge from the shadows when big natural publicity events like this occur.

 

A pastor from our area writes a column every week and he essentially did the same thing.

Seems like an easy thing to do would be to just aim your phone in the direction of the sun and take a video to watch later. Might not have the sun perfectly centered but I would think that you could probably get a pretty good video just aiming in the general direction of the sun without having to directly look at it.

 

I wouldn't do it, unless you want to risk having to buy a new smartphone.

Daughter has 5 pairs of NASA approved glasses. Got them from a school that decided to cancel classes.

I'm really curious about my flight from Dallas to Indy. It starts at 12:30 noon and I land at 3:24. I will be ending up in Indy during the end there. We used to view thru a pin hole made in a box and watch the shadow, not the sun. It is interesting to do that. Surprising what you can see.