BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Chris Dwyer of the Echo Center shares advice on protecting your eyesight during the solar event.
Many of us have eclipse fever going into the weekend, but it’s important to make sure you have the right protective eyewear. The Echo Leahy Center for Lake Champlain is hosting a festival starting Friday morning, and the center’s Chris Dwyer has some advice for onlookers.
“So even though there is an eclipse and the sun is going to be blocked by the moon, it is still the sun. It is still sunlight that you’re looking at when you’re viewing an eclipse. And so you do need to protect your eyes. We have a few different tools that we’re going to be using for people who visit Echo during the eclipse. The most common one is our little eclipse glasses that we’ll be passing out. But we also have some other tools. These are some regular binoculars,” he said, “we fitted them with a filter paper that blocks out most light so you can only use it to look at the sun.”
Echo also kept young children in mind when planning for the event.
“We had so much of that filter left over that we were able to make some other tools for some smaller folks who maybe aren’t able to manipulate glasses. So we have these face shields for infants that you can put on and they’ll be able to look at the sky. It doesn’t require any adjustment like the binoculars do,” said Dwyer.
“If you have a small child at Echo, and you’d like them to be able to safely view the eclipse an echo staff member member will be able to provide one of these for you.”