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Did you look at the solar eclipse too long? Doctors explain signs of eye damage
Did you look up at the solar eclipse without your safety glasses? Looking at the sun — even when it’s partially covered like during the eclipse on April 8 — can cause eye damage.
There is no safe dose of solar ultraviolet rays or infrared radiation, said Dr. Yehia Hashad, an ophthalmologist, retinal specialist and the chief medical officer at eye health company Bausch + Lomb.
“A very small dose could cause harm to some people,” he said. “That’s why we say the partial eclipse could also be damaging. And that’s why we protect our eyes with the partial as well as with the full sun.”
But how do you know if you’ve hurt your vision? We asked eye doctors what to know.
Is it a sign of eye damage if your eyes hurt after looking at the eclipse?
Your eyes likely won’t hurt if you look at the eclipse without protection — but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous.
In fact, the painlessness is part of why the event is so concerning to eye care professionals, said Dr. Jason P. Brinton, an ophthalmologist and medical director at Brinton Vision in St. Louis.
“Everyone knows don’t look at the sun. If you go out on a bright day and try to look at the sun — it’s very uncomfortable, very bright. So most people intuitively associate that with something they should not be doing,” Brinton said. “But with the eclipse, so much of that is blocked and so that natural sense of discomfort and aversion to the brightness is not there.”
In some cases, the sun can also damage the cornea, which can be painful, Brinton says.
“The good news is that this fully heals without lasting issues, so this is why we don’t think about this aspect as much. The retinal issues, on the other hand, are painless and can have permanent, lasting effects on vision,” he said.
What are other signs of eye damage from looking at a solar eclipse?
Hashad says there are a few “alarming signals” to be aware of, including:
- Headaches
- Blurred vision
- Scotomas, or dark spots: “You just see a black area or a black spot in the field of vision,” Hashad said.
- Color changes: “You don’t see the colors the same way you were seeing it before,” he said.
- Distorted lines: Hashad says this is clinically known as metamorphopsia, which makes lines appear warped, distorted or bent.
“This could be happening unilateral or bilateral,” he said. “So it doesn’t necessarily happen in both eyes. It could be affecting one over the other or both eyes together.”
Issues may not be apparent immediately, either, sometimes appearing one to a few days following the event.
And while some will regain normal visual function, sometimes the damage is permanent.
“Often there will be some recovery of the vision in the first few months after it, but sometimes there is no recovery and sometimes there’s a degree to which it is permanent,” Brinton said.
What should you do if you show symptoms of eye damage?
If you’re experiencing any symptoms of eye damage, Hashad suggested people “immediately” seek an ophthalmologist’s advice.
“Seeing an eye care professional to solidify the diagnosis and for education I think is reasonable,” Brinton said.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a treatment for solar retinopathy, the official name for the condition.
“Right now there is nothing that we do for this. Just wait and give it time and the body does tend to heal up a measure of it,” Brinton explained.
That is why prevention is so important, and remains the “mainstay of treatment of solar retinopathy or solar damage to the retina,” Hashad explained.
How long is too long to look at a solar eclipse without glasses?
Any amount of time looking at the solar eclipse without glasses is too long, experts said.
“Damage from the solar eclipse could happen to the retina in seconds,” Hashad said. “That’s why we don’t want people to stare even for a short period of time — even if for a few seconds to the direct sun — whether eclipsed or even partially eclipsed.”
The Missouri Supreme Court halted the immediate release Wednesday of a man whose murder conviction was overturned — just as the man was about to walk free.
A St. Louis Circuit Court judge had ordered Christopher Dunn, now 52, to be released by 6 p.m. CDT Wednesday and threatened the prison warden with contempt if Dunn remained imprisoned. But Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey has been fighting Dunn’s release.
The situation was chaotic as the deadline set by the judge approached. Corrections Department spokesperson Karen Pojmann told The Associated Press that Dunn was out of the prison facility and waiting for a ride. His wife told the AP she was on his way to pick him up. Minutes later, Pojmann corrected herself and said that while Dunn was signing paperwork to be released, the Missouri Supreme Court issued a ruling that put his freedom on hold.
St. Louis Circuit Judge Jason Sengheiser overturned Dunn’s murder conviction Monday, citing evidence of “actual innocence” in the 1990 killing. He ordered Dunn’s immediate release then, but Bailey appealed, and the state Department of Corrections declined to release Dunn.
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore had filed a motion Wednesday urging the judge to immediately order Dunn’s freedom.
“The Attorney General cannot unilaterally decide to ignore this Court’s Order,” Gore wrote.
An attorney for the Department of Corrections told a lawyer in Gore’s office that Bailey advised the agency not to release Dunn until the appeal plays out, according to a court filing. When told it was improper to ignore a court order, the Department of Corrections attorney “responded that the Attorney General’s Office is legal counsel to the DOC and the DOC would be following the advice of counsel.”
Dunn’s attorney, Tricia Rojo Bushnell, the executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, expressed her frustration.
“What is this bringing to taxpayers in Missouri? What is this use of our resources and our state’s time getting us?” she said. “All it’s doing is keeping innocent people in prison.”
Dunn’s wife said while driving to the prison that they were numb when he didn’t get out earlier this week.
“If you know a little about the story, you know we’ve had a lot of disappointments where we thought we’d finally get his freedom and it was snatched away,” Kira Dunn said. “So we were just bracing ourselves.”
Dunn’s situation is similar to what happened to Sandra Hemme.
The 64-year-old woman spent 43 years in prison for the fatal stabbing of a woman in St. Joseph in 1980. A judge on June 14 cited evidence of “actual innocence” and overturned her conviction. She had been the longest held wrongly incarcerated woman known in the U.S., according to the National Innocence Project, which worked to free Hemme.
Appeals by Bailey — all the way up to the Missouri Supreme Court — kept Hemme imprisoned at the Chillicothe Correctional Center. During a court hearing Friday, Judge Ryan Horsman said that if Hemme wasn’t released within hours, Bailey himself would have to appear in court with contempt of court on the table. Hemme was released later that day.
The judge also scolded Bailey’s office for calling the warden and telling prison officials not to release Hemme after he ordered her to be freed on her own recognizance.
Dunn, who is Black, was 18 in 1990 when 15-year-old Ricco Rogers was killed. Among the key evidence used to convict him of first-degree murder was testimony from two boys who were at the scene of the shooting. Both later recanted their testimony, saying they had been coerced by police and prosecutors.
At an evidentiary hearing in 2020, another judge agreed that a jury would likely find Dunn not guilty based on new evidence. But that judge, William Hickle, declined to exonerate Dunn, citing a 2016 Missouri Supreme Court ruling that only death row inmates — not those like Dunn sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole — could make a “freestanding” claim of actual innocence.
A 2021 law now allows prosecutors to seek court hearings in cases with new evidence of a wrongful conviction.
Although Bailey’s office is not required to oppose such efforts, lawyers for his office said at the hearing that initial testimony from two boys at the scene who identified Dunn as the shooter was correct, even though they recanted as adults.
He also raised opposition at a hearing for Lamar Johnson, who spent 28 years in prison for murder. Another St. Louis judge ruled in February 2023 that Johnson was wrongfully convicted, and he was freed.
Another hearing begins Aug. 21 for death row inmate Marcellus Williams. Bailey’s office is opposing the challenge to Williams’ conviction, too. Timing is of the essence: Williams is scheduled to be executed Sept. 24.
Steven Puro, professor emeritus of political science at St. Louis University, said Bailey is in a highly competitive race for the attorney general position with the primary quickly approaching on Aug. 6.
“Bailey is trying to show that he is, quote, ‘tough on crime,’ which is a very important Republican conservative position,” he said. “Clearly, he’s angering members of the judicial system that he will have to argue before in the future. But he’s making the strategic notion that he needs to get his name before the voters and try to use that to win the primary election.”
Michael Wolff, a former Missouri Supreme Court judge and chief justice, agreed, saying it seems this has become political for Bailey.
“But one of the things is that no matter what your beliefs are, if a court orders something to happen, it’s not your purview to say no,” he said. “The court has to be obeyed.”
The U.S. military intercepted several Russian and Chinese bombers in international airspace near the coast of Alaska Wednesday.
Two Russian Tu-95s and two Chinese H-6s entered what is known as the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone, North American Aerospace Defense Command said in a statement Wednesday night.
The aircraft were “detected, tracked and intercepted,” NORAD said. They remained in the Alaska ADIZ and did not enter U.S. airspace.
The bombers were intercepted by U.S. F-16 and F-35 fighter jets, along with Canadian CF-18s and other support aircraft, a U.S. defense official confirmed to CBS News.
The official said that this marks the first time ever that Russian and Chinese aircraft have jointly entered the Alaska ADIZ, and the first time Chinese H-6s have encroached off Alaska.
While the Alaska ADIZ is considered part of international airspace, it is defined as an area where sovereign U.S. airspace ends but “that requires the ready identification of all aircraft in the interest of national security,” according to NORAD.
The activity from the Russian and Chinese bombers was “not seen as a threat,” NORAD noted.
Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
In February, the U.S. detected four Russian warplanes flying in the Alaska ADIZ, as was another Russian military aircraft in May 2023.
And in February 2023, Russian warplanes were intercepted there twice in one week. And that same month, a Chinese spy balloon was detected near Alaska before eventually making its way across the continental U.S. and being shot down off the coast of South Carolina.
— Eleanor Watson contributed to this report.
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