Accounts using AI to generate answers will be banned. Joke responses at the parent-level will be removed. RULES: Rule 1: Top level comments must contain a genuine attempt at an answerĪll direct answers to a post must make a genuine attempt to answer the question. This subreddit was inspired by this thread and more specifically, this comment. r/explainlikeimfive (check their rules before posting) r/OutOfTheLoop (check their rules before posting) Thanks for reading all of this, even if you didn't read all of this, and your eye started somewhere else have a cookie. All questions are welcome - except clear trolls, please don't be that guy. All questions are welcome such as to how to change oil, to how to tie shoes. Suffice it to say, there's nothing good about staring at the sun. So do your eyes a favor and avoid looking at it.Īfter all, there are around 6,000 stars in the night sky you can safely observe for as long as you wish.There is no such thing as a Stupid Question!ĭon't be embarrassed of your curiosity everyone has questions that they may feel uncomfortable asking certain people, so this place gives you a nice area not to be judged about asking it. Normally, our bodies have a built-in defense mechanism against staring at the sun. Specifically, when we squint we look up, which minimizes the amount of light coming in and protects our cornea and retina.īut during a solar eclipse, the sun doesn't appear bright enough to trigger our defense mechanisms so we can end up staring for longer than is safe. Turns out, during a solar eclipse, most of the sun's light is blocked, which actually can trick your brain into thinking it's safe to stare. But in rare cases, the damage is so extreme it never heals, leading to a rare condition called solar retinopathy. This usually only shows up in reckless eclipse gazers. The cornea protects the rest of your eye and is therefore covered in pain receptors that alert you whenever a pesky eyelash is on the loose.īut UV radiation isn't the only issue. Too much visible light can penetrate your eye and damage the retinal tissue, which causes a condition called solar retinitis. This means parts of your retina can no longer process light normally, so you can end up with entire chunks of your vision blurred out.ĭepending on the extent of the damage, recovery can take weeks, months, and in severe cases over a year. Now, you're doing more than just overloading your retina. For starters, you're giving your eyes an abnormally high dose of UV radiation the same stuff that causes sunburns. Like your skin, the cornea at the front of your eye can also burn. Usually, it clears up in a few minutes that is, unless you keep staring. Normally, light reaches the retina at the back of your eye, where it triggers photoreceptors that relay the information to your brain. This is how you are able to see anything.īut bombard them with too much light at once, and you can actually damage the cells and proteins that help them process light. Since your retina has no pain receptors, the damage won't hurt, but it will leave that blurry splotch on your vision. If it's only for a moment, the worst you'll experience is a blurry splotch on your vision called an after image. On a clear day, the sun shines up to 5,000 times brighter than an average light bulb. When something that bright strikes your eye, a few things can happen. Now, looking at the sun through a telescope is an especially terrible idea but just how bad is it to glance up with the naked eye? Narrator: Whether it's to map the stars, spy on other planets, or study the sun, humans have been looking to the skies for millennia. But some objects are safer to observe than others.įor example, astronomer Mark Thompson put a pig's eye behind a regular telescope aimed at the sun and it burned a hole straight through the lens in about 20 seconds. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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