tiny black spots on the sun

jones 19

hello all
while looking at the sun going down through a very thick haze monday evening, the sun could be lookad at directly, it was like an orange, so i said it was safe to look at through a pair of binoculars, while looking closely i notice two tiny dots , one smaller then the other , wasnt dirt on a lens , mercury at a long shot, maybe something else, any theories ? and no its not retinal damage as my bro suggested,
jones.....

ThatDrGuy

That was incredibly stupid. Enough said.

namloc1980

Sunspots.

jones 19

ThatDrGuy wrote: »

That was incredibly stupid. Enough said.

like i said, it was safe to look at due to thick haze, i'd hardly post about looking at the sun without protection, gimme a break....

Tzetze

Here's a couple of images I took of the Sun on Monday. These are the spots you saw...

endacl

jones 19 wrote: »

hello all
while looking at the sun going down through a very thick haze monday evening, the sun could be lookad at directly, it was like an orange, so i said it was safe to look at through a pair of binoculars, while looking closely i notice two tiny dots , one smaller then the other , wasnt dirt on a lens , mercury at a long shot, maybe something else, any theories ? and no its not retinal damage as my bro suggested,
jones.....

It's never safe. Get your order in now for a guide dog. In the meantime, you might consider a dog that's trained to bite when it sees anybody doing something that moronic. Just my tuppence worth...

Captain Chaos

jones 19 wrote: »

like i said, it was safe to look at due to thick haze, i'd hardly post about looking at the sun without protection, gimme a break....

It's never ever safe to look directly at the sun with any sort of unfiltered optics under any weather conditions. You are very lucky you can still see for the time being anyway but you did some permanent damage to your eyes which will hit you in the long run.

Amtmann

Sometimes when the sun is almost set, it is deep red and easy to look at. At times like this, what kind of damage can looking at it through binoculars do?

2 stroke

My understanding is that wavelengths other than visible light are also focused by lenses. Thick haze would have little effect on much of the radiation emitted by the sun.

endacl

From the good folks at NASA: 'When a person looks repeatedly or for a long time at the Sun without proper protection for the eyes, this photochemical retinal damage may be accompanied by a thermal injury - the high level of visible and near-infrared radiation causes heating that literally cooks the exposed tissue. This thermal injury or photocoagulation destroys the rods and cones, creating a small blind area. The danger to vision is significant because photic retinal injuries occur without any feeling of pain (there are no pain receptors in the retina), and the visual effects do not occur for at least several hours after the damage is done' [Pitts, 1993].

And... 'The only time that the Sun can be viewed safely with the naked eye is during a total eclipse, when the Moon completely covers the disk of the Sun'.

The damage is not immediate, or immediately detectable, but is there nonetheless. It has nothing to do with the apparent brightness of the sun.

I've been thinking of a step-by step guide for anybody considering viewing the sun with unfiltered bino's. For your consideration:

1. Take the binos outside and select a suitable viewing position.
2. Put the binos down somewhere prominent.
3. Go back into the house.
4. Hide under a table. (If you don't have a table, use a chair).
5. Periodically leave the house to check on binos. I suggest hourly intervals.
6. Repeat step 5, until you notice somebody has stolen the binos.

This process, while not providing pleasing views of our nearest star, will ensure that anybody dumb enough to try will not be equipped to do so.

jfSDAS

hi jones19,

yes, you saw sunspots as the other posters suggested but ...

... please, please, please do not repeat that viewing of the sun through binoculars!

Under no circumstances, even when the sun appears dimmed when low down, should you look at it in any instrument. It's not the visible light but the invisible radiation when is doing the damage.

Infrared is invisible to the human eye but is radiated by the sun and is the heat end of the spectrum just beyond the red. When viewing the sun it's these wavelengths that are damaging your retina without you being aware it is happening.

I would absolutely say it is a must you immediately get your eyes checked by an optician and you must say to them what you had been doing -- they will look for any retina damage. Unfortunately, if there is serious damage it can NEVER be repaired and you will be left with ghost images of the sun in your normal vision.

A recognised expert on eye safety and solar viewing is Prof. Ralph Chou who has written articles for Sky & Telescope magazine over the years (and also Fred Espenak's NASA eclipse site). His latest article on eye safety for the transit of Venus is at http://www.transitofvenus.org/june2012/eye-safety/280-viewing-the-transit-eye-safety

In short, PLEASE DO NOT EVER, EVER view the sun through any instrument unless it has a suitable solar filter (eyepiece projection is the other safe method of course).

all the best,

john (Flannery),
Chairperson,
South Dublin Astronomical Society

Solair

It could have been sunspots or your retina being burnt. It's hard to know which!!

Cú Giobach

jones 19 wrote: »

like i said, it was safe to look at due to thick haze, i'd hardly post about looking at the sun without protection, gimme a break....

Thick haze is not protection of any kind, sort or description whatsoever.
And no breaks shall be given, so that anyone reading this thread is fully aware how dangerous using unfiltered optics to view the Sun is, irrespective of haze or clouds.

jones 19

thonks foe halp ,ma iis ar finne , i thaut i waz toking ubout blax spottss, pleez rite ubout blaac spats. blaac spats blaac spatts...
jooones....

Popoutman

There are full-aperture solar filters that fit snugly over the objectives of a pair of binoculars that *will* filter the UV/IR out, and dim the visible light enough to be safe for viewing e.g. from here.
The problem with the haze is that it doesn't filter out the mid-range IR that heats up and kills the retinal cells. The haze filters off most of the blue but a large portion of the IR is not scattered away at all and literally burns through the haze. As there are no pain receptors in the retina you can boil the retina with the IR energy and not feel it. It's not immediate that the cells die, often they are damaged enough that they start to perform poorly and then die off.

Make an appointment with a good optician immediately - if there is anything that can be done to mitigate the damage it will be in the time shortly after the damage is done.

endacl

jones 19 wrote: »

thonks foe halp ,ma iis ar finne , i thaut i waz toking ubout blax spottss, pleez rite ubout blaac spats. blaac spats blaac spatts...
jooones....

The 'black spots' question was answered in a previous post. If that wasn't enough, maybe Wikipedia would be a good starting point? What you got here was the information you really needed. Best of luck.

jones 19

Tzetze wrote: »

Here's a couple of images I took of the Sun on Monday. These are the spots you saw...

They are exactly the one's i saw, nice shots....thanks

bogwalrus

Emmm. Ok, when i was growing up in kerry i remember always looking at the sun setting coming from town in the evening times. Its intensity would have been similar to staring at the moon. My eyes are fine. In so many cultures there is reference to watching the sun setting etc. As far as i know the angle of the sun when it sets is just an illusion so there would be no actual direct radiation but a mirage of the sun setting. (i heard that on QI)

ThatDrGuy

You can have a mirage of objects - not radiation. Whether the radiation is being refracted by the atmosphere or not, its still radiation. Focusing that radiation onto your retinas is a bad idea.

bogwalrus

so do lenses focus radiation? i though due to its wavelength it would not be interfered at all by a glass lens? Meaning whether you are staring at the sun with or without binoculars should cause the exact same damage etc

ThatDrGuy

In the visible and near infra-red wavelengths you bet they can focus. The cornea and lens in the eye will absorb some of it (which can lead to cataracts ) but when focused onto retina - disaster.

endacl

bogwalrus wrote: »

Emmm. Ok, when i was growing up in kerry i remember always looking at the sun setting coming from town in the evening times. Its intensity would have been similar to staring at the moon. My eyes are fine. In so many cultures there is reference to watching the sun setting etc. As far as i know the angle of the sun when it sets is just an illusion so there would be no actual direct radiation but a mirage of the sun setting. (i heard that on QI)

Were you focusing the radiation from the setting sun using lenses? QI does get a lot of stuff right. Also gets a lot of stuff nearly right, and a some other stuff wrong. Always entertaining, but hardly a citable source.

endacl

bogwalrus wrote: »

so do lenses focus radiation? i though due to its wavelength it would not be interfered at all by a glass lens? Meaning whether you are staring at the sun with or without binoculars should cause the exact same damage etc

Yep. Visible light is only a small patch of the electromagnetic spectrum, differentiated from ultra-violet, infra- red, gamma- micro- x- and all they other rays by their wavelength, which can be from kilometres to atomic scales, peak to peak. The only thing that defines visible light in these terms is that it is visible. To human eyes. Which we only get one pair if. Each.

bogwalrus

For some reason I just assumed some parts of the electromagnetic spectrum were too small to be affected by the atoms in a lens. I can understand photons being bent through a a lens unless all radiation is photons also. Sorry off topic.

endacl

bogwalrus wrote: »

For some reason I just assumed some parts of the electromagnetic spectrum were too small to be affected by the atoms in a lens. I can understand photons being bent through a a lens unless all radiation is photons also. Sorry off topic.

You're bang on topic. Maybe not with the thread title, but certainly with the conversation.

Batsy

endacl wrote: »

And... 'The only time that the Sun can be viewed safely with the naked eye is during a total eclipse, when the Moon completely covers the disk of the Sun'.

That's nonsense. It's safe to look at the Sun when it's on the horizon at sunset or sunrise.

endacl

That's nonsense. It's safe to look at the Sun when it's on the horizon at sunset or sunrise.[/Quote]
Take it up with the smart folks at NASA....

bogwalrus

Seems it is a myth.

http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/vision/Galileo.html

endacl

bogwalrus wrote: »

Seems it is a myth.

http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/vision/Galileo.html

This was indeed. Galileo had more sense...

bogwalrus

If you scroll down there is doctor reports on staring at sun when sunset. They say its fine.


Also at top it says there are a few NASA sites that NASA are not associated with.

endacl

bogwalrus wrote: »

If you scroll down there is doctor reports on staring at sun when sunset. They say its fine.


Also at top it says there are a few NASA sites that NASA are not associated with.

Maybe an analogy... If this were the hunting/shooting forum, and somebody posted saying they were looking down the barrel of a shotgun before cleaning it, and they were absolutely fine after the experience, and they had found umpteen articles online saying that non-loaded guns are perfectly safe, and that a famous gun user from the past, maybe billy the kid, had suffered no ill effects from looking down his gun barrel, and that in fact his eventual death by shooting had nothing whatsoever to do with his idiotic gun-looking antics..... the immediate responses would (quite rightly) echo what has been posted above. The chances of doing lasting and irreparable damage exist, and while the op seems to have, by his own account, gotten away with it, I feel that is incumbent on those of us here who have knowledge of the topic and are aware of the danger to inform people when the subject comes up.

This isn't a religion or politics forum where largely unimportant stuff gets debated as a matter of opinion, with links and articles being rustled up to justify opinions, or to score semantic points. The potential damage and its causes can be verified. The standard 10x50 pair of binos can amplify the light/radiation entering the eye by up to 500 times. We're all adults here, living in a free country. Go ahead if you like and best of luck to you. You may be just fine. On the other hand, you may be blinded. Just don't make out its a safe thing to do when clearly, it is not. Remember that there are people who see this site as a source of information more than conversation.

But doctor, I thought it would be fine. I read this thread on Boards....

Oh, and Galileo was a smart fellow. Even without knowledge of anything beyond visible light, he conducted almost all his solar observations using projections. This might be the way to go.