Safety should be a priority when viewing the total solar eclipse on April 8

On April 8, a total solar eclipse will cover a large part of the Dallas-Fort Worth area in darkness. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience, another total eclipse won’t be visible in Texas for hundreds of years, but watching the show in the sky requires preparation.

“It is dangerous to look directly at the sun without eye protection,” said Dr. Mary Urquhart a planetary scientist at UT Dallas. “Irreparable damage can happen as quickly as five seconds or less, so make sure that you are wearing eye protection.”

The easiest way to protect your eyes is with eclipse glasses.

“Glasses are required or some other solar filter with the right standard to be able to look directly at the sun anytime other than totality,” said Urquhart.

Make sure your glasses comply with the International Organization for Standardization, look for a note on the glasses that says it complies with ISO 12312-1.

The American Astronomical Society has an approved list of brands on its website. Eclipse glasses are thousands of times darker than standard sunglasses.

If you have glasses lying around from the annular eclipse in October 2023, be sure to inspect them for any damage.

“Make sure you inspect them for scratches, see if they’re crumpled, wrinkled in any way. If they are, don’t use them,” said Urquhart.

Once you get your glasses, be sure to store them in a way that keeps them protected.

Urquhart suggests storing them flat in an envelope where they won’t get scratched and be sure to keep them away from extreme temperature changes.

And if you can’t get eclipse glasses you can still see the eclipse, it’ll just require creativity.

“You have to use indirect viewing methods. So that could be looking under the leaves of trees, it could be looking at the shadow cast by your own hands, and you’re effectively making pinhole viewers, or another object that can act as a pinhole viewer” said Urquhart.

Once totality hits, it is totally safe to look up.

“During totality, it’s absolutely safe to look directly at the sun and to notice the faint corona, that outer atmosphere of the sun that’s usually only visible with special scientific instrumentation that we use in space,” said Urquhart.