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Solar-Eclipse Glasses On Amazon May Not Meet NASA's Safety Requirements (qz.com)
For those planning to watch the solar eclipse on August 21st, you're going to want to make sure you have some specialized, ultra-dark glasses to see safely, especially if you're not in the "path of totality." If you're on the hunt for said glasses, please be on the lookout to make sure you buy glasses that meet NASA's safety standards. Quartz is reporting that there are many "fly-by-night manufacturers looking to turn a quick profit by selling subpar and potentially dangerous goods to unsuspecting Americans." From the report: The first stop for most seeking a pair of eclipse glasses is likely to be Amazon, where there are literally thousands of listings for the devices, ranging in materials from cardboard to bronze. I, too, went on Amazon to scout out a pair. I picked more or less at random: I chose a cheap pack of 10 cardboard glasses with five different designs, at least two of which were not garishly jingoistic. About a week after I bought them, I had a thought: Maybe I should double-check to make sure they met safety standards set by the scientific community. Next stop: NASA. NASA, of course, has a website dedicated to the 2017 eclipse, and on it, they have a section dedicated to eclipse-viewing safety. The site says that eclipse-viewing glasses must meet a few basic criteria: Have ISO 12312-2 certification (that is, having been certified as passing a particular set of tests set forth by the International Organization of Standardization); Have the manufacturer's name and address printed somewhere on the product; Not be older than three years, or have scratched or wrinkled lenses.
Works well.
yeah, was here first !
Easy!
Just use the Disk inside a regular 5 1/4 Floppy .
If you don't have one handy, use a 8" one instead.
look, you could buy a pre certified glass, put it on some cardboard and not meet the requirements. it might pass the safety requirements though as a device, if it was put into them, but the short blurb makes it like they wouldn't.
besides than that what you will find is ISO 12312-2 "compliant".
oh the days of just using smoked glass.
the device might pass the safety checks - it just doesnt have the paperwork... that doesnt mean that it will make you blind.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I consider my eyesight to be valuable, so the only direct viewing of the eclipse I'll be doing is through a piece of shade 14 welding glass.
I hope people are careful. It is very easy to damage one's eyes looking directly at the eclipse, or thru inferior filters. Check this link out for proper protection.
https://www.space.com/36941-solar-eclipse-eye-protection-guide.html
Welding glass filters may work - but one needs to get the right shade. "Only goggles made for electric arc welding can be used to observe the sun, and they must have a shade scale number of 12 or higher. Shade 13 is ideal for solar viewing, but that shade is typically not sold in stores, Fienberg added."
If people choose to buy non-compliant glasses then that's their choice. Does the state have to waste money it literally stole at gunpoint interfering in everything?
--
roman_mir
You only have one set of eyes, don't be foolish about this.
Chances are that non-certified stuff has deficiencies in UV/IR filtering, so while you may be able to look into the sun for much longer than usual, your eyes still may get an unhealthy dose of radiation. No protection at all will at least have you turn away in time (unless you're foolish enough to look at the sun through an unprotected telescope, binoculars or tele lens).
As an amateur astronomer, I use Baader visual solar filter film, adapted to my different scopes and lenses. An A4 sheet (you could make a load of sunglasses from this) comes at 25EUR, which is very cheap compared to other options for observing the sun. Most of all, it's safe!
Anyone buying eye protection from random amazon sellers at this late stage doesn't really deserve to have eyes.
Sadly all reliable sources of actual good gear (Thousand Oaks; if it's good quality solar film without their logo on it then it was bought from them and rebadged) have notices on their sites that essentially come down to "too late now".
Good times ahead for the American eye-care industry.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
And of course every proper American will accept this responsibility and have their glasses tested scientifically (instead of the government just testing a sample). Seems reasonable to me.
http://hilaroad.com/camp/proje...
Just like we did in grade school in February of 1979.
Garishly jingoistic? Oh my a God, they had American flag patterns on them? That must have been so hard to experience. Twerp.
Yes a piece of welding glass works great but make sure you use at least a #14 glass per NASA recommendations. This is widely available through welding supply companies. Not all welding eye protection is adequate for looking at the Sun.
No form of looking through something at the sun is safe, so always use projection.
Rummage through your pile of Amazon boxes for a long skinny one. Cut a hole in the center of one end, and then tape a piece of aluminum foil over the hole to cover it completely. Make the smallest possible pinhole in the foil, to project the sun onto the other end of the carton. Cut a sheet of white paper to fit flat inside the end where the image is projected.
On eclipse day, all you need to do is go for beer and select a virgin for sacrifice.
And for anyone using telescopes, binoculars or slr cameras...
Set a loud damn alarm for ten seconds before the end of totality, and do not leave unfiltered devices on tripods pointed at the sun. At best you'll wreck your camera. At worst some idiot kids (or adult) will try to sneak a peek.
I've seen the eyepiece cover of a Celestron kids telescope melt fully into the eyepiece itself on a scope left mounted after totality in China 2009.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
Ten or so years ago when there was a partial eclipse, I found that two layers of aluminized mylar worked well. Where did I get said aluminized mylar? From a box of Pop-Tarts! Yum.
Obligatory don't try this at home kids: you might get fat from the Pop-Tarts.
For the most part, Amazon is a flea market where merchants can sell their goods (sometime "bads", he he) yet Amazon gets blamed for selling them. Merchants ship their crap to Amazons warehouse and fulfill orders on behalf of the merchant.
Also, just like "don't eat yellow snow", don't stare at the sun, you idiots.
Does this news make anyone else nervous?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
No shiite! Whoo wee!! Blaming Amazon for every seller on the platform today seems to be the spurt of the day.
Everyone including Bloomberg today carrying anti-Amazon stories.
Would that be related to Amazon's founder becoming richest man in the world all of a sudden?
Welding glass filters may work - but one needs to get the right shade. "Only goggles made for electric arc welding can be used to observe the sun, and they must have a shade scale number of 12 or higher. Shade 13 is ideal for solar viewing, but that shade is typically not sold in stores, Fienberg added."
NASA recommends #14 welding glass.
I bought a pack of glasses off Amazon. Not the cheapest ones, I figured the plastic-framed ones would be less likely to be fakes than the cardboard ones, and of course I made sure it at least claims to be ISO 12312-2 tested and compliant. But it was still a somewhat shady dealer, and anyone can print the words "ISO 12312-2" on the packaging.
I would think there would be a site to check that something claiming ISO certification actually was tested against it, but I've not been able to find one. Does anyone know of a way to confirm?
The SAFEST way to view the eclipse is INDIRECTLY, not looking directly at the sun.
Instructions:
https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/s...
https://www.timeanddate.com/ec...
Boy, can you imagine the number of dead/damaged smartphones on the 22nd of August, after people point their phones at the sun? You know there will be those that do it. I've got an ISO 12312-2 filter for my dSLR all ready to go. It amazes me the stupidity of some "oh, I'll just wear dark glasses".
You may not be able to look very long, but it's a lot more fun than staring at the Sun!
What's the UV rating on those Pop-Tart wrappers? Oh wait . . . never mind. They weren't designed for looking directly at the sun.
You get what you pay for.
Obligatory don't try this at home kids: you might go blind from the Pop-Tarts.
It's ISO tested? OK
It's ISO compliant? OK
So, what makes you think that it's ISO certified? If it were ISO certified, it would almost certainly state that it's iso certified.
I have zero specific knowledge about *who* certifies under ISO 12312-2. Usually it is a 3rd party lab which will have some "stamp" indicating the certification (possibly with a product or customer/manufacturer's PID). You'd then either go to their web site and confirm that your product's P/N (or its manufacturers ID#) has been tested by them and they have a current certification. In many cases, this information isn't available on the web, so you have to write or call them. Bottom line: Testing is not compliance is not certification
I always recommend a pinhole camera. Zero cost from stuff you already have lying around. Zero chance of frying your eyes since you are looking at a screen with the sun at your back.
Me? I'll flip a coin between my Coronado PST and a small travel scope with a Baader mylar filter. Cherry red or a faint bluish tinge...
...laura
Here is another way that not a lot of people seem to know of:
1. Go buy a small convex round rear-view mirror at any auto parts or department store. (This is the kind of round mirrors that bulge out in the center, and ANY size will work--even the little 2-inch across ones)
2. To view the sun, on a clear day stand near a building where the building's wall is in the shade of the roof overhang.
3. When you hold the round mirror at a 45-degree angle, you will see a round spot of light projected onto the shaded wall. Any activity on the sun such as sunspots (or eclipses) will be easily visible as dark spots on it.
There might be spots caused by dirt on the mirror, but if you rotate the mirror, the dirt-spots will rotate also. The sun spots will stay in the same place.
The farther you stand from the wall, the larger the reflected image is, but the fainter it is also...
This is a nice kids' group experiment to do as it appears BIG on the wall and doesn't involve anybody looking straight at the sun at all.
4 bucks at Northern tool for just the glass, 4 bucks for welding goggles at Harbor Freight or 5 bucks for a flimsy paper pair of glasses. Going with the welding goggles.
And can re-use them later as a Steampunk Costume Prop. . .
...could someone please tell me at what point during a solar eclipse more light reaches the viewer and the light intensity increases compared to any other day when the sun is not eclipsed? Just checking because a lot of these comments lack a basic understanding of what's happening during a solar eclipse.
Don't bother with the expensive solar filters, unless you already have them, from a reputable source.
Use welding glasses, but they have to be #14, not anything less.
The other way is to use projection. A small binocular is enough. Tie it to a tripod, and cover one side. Tilt it so it projects an image on a white piece of cardboard, then look at the cardboard with your back to the sun. This is safe. I did it for the Mercury transit last year.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
... with a large cardboard box, a piece of white paper taped on the inside, and a sheet of aluminum foil taped over a hole across from the paper with a tiny hole poked in it. Essentially, a pinhole camera. There's really no need to be looking directly at the sun. Through anything. Dear $DIETY, I can't think of any reason to trust something bought on Amazon to use for viewing the sun. I'm expecting, though, to hear about numerous people with destroyed retinas on the news the day after the eclipse.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
i was an intern at apple back in 1991-1994 .. during one of those summers there was an [almost?] total eclipse there - and we discovered that you can watch it through a 3.5" floppy disk - open the little door and look through the disk medium - the low-densitey ones (700KB-800KB ones) worked great - different brands had different brightnesses .. the high-density ones were too bright to use but you could double-layer them to make it work. looking through cds also worked but created an interesting (or annoying depending on your personality) kaleidoscope pattern ..
there were dozens of people standing outside looking through floppy disks in the almost-darkness - pretty bizarre
anyhow i have set aside three boxes of old floppy disks for the 2017 eclipse .. in case the amazon glasses are crap
Only RedHat Certified Engineers can do Redhat correctly!
Only CCNAs can do anything Cisco correctly!
Anything else is unpossible.
I'm way down in Los Angeles, where we will still get around 70% solar coverage.
Here is something to look for. Sunlight shining through plants can create lots of tiny images of even a partial eclipse on the ground, wall, etc behind it. Overlapping leaves can create a lot of "pinhole camera' effects."
NASA has a whole building at Airventure all this week, and is handing out these glasses like candy.
Solar-Eclipse Glasses On Amazon Might Meet NASA's Safety Requirements
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Just a related kvetch. The concept of laws that mandate standards you have to pay to see is something I've long found irritating. Why should there be a legally mandated "standard" that is kept a secret behind a pay wall?
You can't find out what the testing requirements are for a filter to view the eclipse without paying to look at the standard...
https://www.iso.org/standard/59289.html
NRRPT/RCT
Jingoistic: "nationalism taking the form of aggressive, warlike foreign policy"
So glasses with an American flag are aggressive and offensive to the author of this article? Can't anything be written about anymore without it being political? We are about to experience an event many of us may never get the chance to see again in our lifetimes, something that should unite everyone, and you choose to make a political statement about it? Grow up!