Can You Watch an Eclipse with Welding Goggles?

Welding goggles have many perks and most of them may not be what you think. While they offer protection against the optical radiation that’s an inevitable part of welding, using them to watch eclipses is significant thinking out of the box. But can you watch an eclipse with welding goggles?

It’s possible to watch eclipses with welding goggles, but the goggles must be of the highest level. Level 14 goggles are the highest level welding goggles and are the only ones approved for watching eclipses. Unless you’re a welder, buying level 14 goggles to watch eclipses may be unworthy.

In this article, you’ll learn if you need separate eclipse-viewing goggles if you already have your welding goggles. Also, you’ll learn some of the best glasses for viewing eclipses and why you need a glass to do that in the first place.

Why Is a Solar Eclipse Bad for Your Eyes?

Before answering the question about the safety of welding goggles for solar eclipses, it’s important to know why you need a pair of goggles to watch an eclipse in the first place.

You can look at a solar eclipse with your naked eyes, but only once. While watching the sun and moon overlap, you won’t notice anything out of the ordinary. In most cases, watching a solar eclipse won’t cause any additional pain to your eyes.

However, the symptoms of looking at the sun with your bare eyes during a solar eclipse will start to set in a few hours after the event. In some cases, it may even be days or weeks before you start to notice that something is going wrong.

When you expose your eyes to the sun in a solar eclipse, it leads to a condition known as solar retinopathy. This is the fancy medical term to refer to a condition when the light from the sun in a solar eclipse destroys the cells of your retina.

Solar retinopathy can have diverse effects, depending on the sufferer and the length of time with which they were exposed to the sun. However, the basic symptoms are uniform for most people. If you notice any of the symptoms, you must report to a licensed eye care professional immediately.

The first symptom that usually indicates a problem resulting from watching the eclipse directly is the loss of central vision. This is a result of the damage to the cells in the retina, otherwise known as solar retinopathy.

Without central vision, basic activities like driving or recognizing faces become impossible. However, this is one of the worst outcomes of watching an eclipse without any goggles.

In most cases, the victim loses their color perception. The change in color perception is somewhat hard to notice, and it’s even harder to link it to the eclipse. Since this happens slowly, it’s hard to report it early, unless you already know it as a confirmed symptom of watching an eclipse.

If you watched an eclipse without glasses, it’s important to see a physician as soon as you can. While your eyes may work just fine immediately after, you have no idea what eye defects could result from watching an eclipse.

Even if you watched it with glasses, you may want to monitor your vision over the next few days. If you notice any blurriness, color imbalance, or loss of vision, you may want to see an eye specialist immediately.

How to Watch an Eclipse Safely

At this point, you should know that watching an eclipse without wearing goggles is generally a bad idea. However, lacking the necessary goggles shouldn’t rob you of the fun of watching the moon get in the way of the sun and the earth.

In this section, you’ll learn some of the most creative ways to watch an eclipse without winding up at the hospital for optical treatment. Adopting one of these cheaper solutions is logical, given that a solar eclipse only happens once in a blue moon.

If you don’t have a pair of goggles that can watch the eclipse safely, here are some of the most creative solutions to try.

Using a Cardboard Projector.

Apart from buying a pair of goggles for viewing an eclipse, using a cardboard projector is undoubtedly the most popular solution. If you have two pieces of cardboard, you can create a DIY pinhole projector to project the eclipse clearly on a piece of paper.

If you took physics classes in high school, you should already know how this cardboard projector works. It involves making a pinhole in the first paper and letting light from the sun fall on it.

When you hold the other paper away from the paper with the pinhole, you’ll see an inverted image of the sun. You can adjust the distance between the two papers to change the size of the image projected on the paper.

If you have more prep time, you can attempt creating a box projector. While it’s more complicated than the simple two-paper projector, it gives you a better image and is sturdier than the regular cardboard projector.

Using Welding Goggles.

While cardboard projectors are great, they don’t give you a look at the real thing. With welding goggles, you can look up to the sun in a solar eclipse with minimal risks. While a welder’s glass won’t provide as much protection as one specially made for eclipses, they’re also a good way to have a direct look.

However, you can’t pick up any welding glass to watch a solar eclipse. The only type of welding goggle that is officially approved as safe for viewing eclipses is the level 14 welding goggle. For laymen, that may sound cool, but welders know the rarity of these glasses.

Most welding jobs only require level 12 or 13 glasses. Consequently, that’s what you’re most likely to find in most welding stores. If you love your eyes, however, you may want to avoid using those low-level glasses for eclipse-watching.