Can you reuse your solar eclipse glass
The 2017 total solar eclipse has come and gone, but another one is less than a decade away for North America. Of course, many people may have had such a life-changing experience during the eclipse that they want to re-create it as soon as possible. While a dedicated few may chase eclipses across the seven continents, people in the United States can sit tight until April 8, 2024, when the skies will darken over the country once again.
So if you purchased solar eclipse glasses for the Aug. 21 event last month, will they still be good to use in 2024?
“If the filters aren’t scratched, punctured, or torn, you may reuse them indefinitely.” Punctures, scrapes and scratches that might allow light to leak through the lenses render eclipse glasses unsafe, according to American Astronomical Society (AAS).
So the easiest thing to do with the eclipse viewers is to store them gently in a box out of the way, where they are unlikely to be damaged — and then unbox them in seven years in preparation for your next celestial party.
Looking directly at the sun without proper optical protection can cause permanent eye damage, and paper eclipse glasses must display ISO 12312-2 certification to be considered safe for use during an eclipse. Compliance with ISO certification requires manufacturers to include an obsolescence date alongside the official ISO logo.
“Some glasses/viewers are printed with warnings stating that you shouldn’t look through them for more than 3 minutes at a time and that you should discard them if they are more than 3 years old,” NASA said in a statement.
But even though you should probably replace your current glasses for eclipse viewing in 2024, that doesn’t mean you should just throw out the ones you have. The organization Astronomers without Borders is accepting donations of undamaged eclipse glasses to distribute to schools in Asia and South America for a solar eclipse that will cross those continents two years from now, in 2019.
Read More:
0 comments:
Post a Comment