Astronomers warn northerners against sungazing during eclipse
Skygazers are sending a strong message to northern Canadians keen on watching next month's solar eclipse: never look directly at it, or you risk permanent damage to your eyesight.
A small area of Nunavut will be the only place in Canada where skywatchers can view a total solar eclipse come Aug. 1, but people in other parts of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories can look forward to seeing at least a partial eclipse.
While astronomers gear up for the event, they're warning everyone else about the dangers of gazing directly at such a celestial spectacle.
"Even when the sun is almost completely covered by the moon and there's very little sunlight coming through, there's still an enormous amount of infrared and ultraviolet [radiation]," Mary Lou Whitehorne, a spokeswoman for the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, told CBC News.
"Even though it does not hurt at that point to look at the sun, that radiation can burn your retina and burn it permanently. And then you're left with [a] permanent blind spot in your eye."
Whitehorne and other astronomers say specialized eclipse-watching glasses or welder's filters should be worn for safe eclipse-viewing.
"You need something like a No. 14 welder's filter — a little tough to get, it's a lot denser than welders normally use themselves — but that's what you need to safely look at the sun," said Alan Dyer of Sky News Magazine, who will join other skywatchers on a charter flight from Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, to view the eclipse.
Visible in narrow area
In Canada, the total eclipse will be visible Aug. 1 in a narrow area starting east of Cambridge Bay, extending over eastern Victoria Island, and north over the Prince of Wales, Somerset, Devon and Ellesmere islands. It can seen from Alert, Grise Fiord and the Haughton Crater.
Dyer said other parts of Nunavut and the northernmost parts of the Northwest Territories can expect to see a partial eclipse, with 50 to 99 per cent of the sun expected to be covered by the moon.
The eclipse is expected to occur around 3 a.m. to 4 a.m. local time. A partial eclipse could last up to 90 minutes, but Dyer said a total eclipse is only one to two minutes long.
Whitehorne said a cheaper alternative to welder's filters or eclipse glasses is by creating a simple pinhole viewer with a piece of cardboard and a piece of white paper or card, then watching the eclipse with one's back turned to the sun.
"You don't look through the pinhole at the sun," she said. "You look in the opposite direction at the image that the sunlight casts through the pinhole on to the white card behind it and you can watch the progress of the entire eclipse this way."
Either way, both Whitehorne and Dyer said one should never look directly at the sun.
The last time Canadians could see a total eclipe of the sun was in 1979, although people in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut witnessed a partial eclipse in 2003.
The next total eclipse to be visible from Canada won't be until the year 2024.