Tips to protect yourself when viewing partial solar eclipse

If you look up into the sky on Saturday morning you will see a partial solar eclipse taking place. This means the moon will gradually cover about two-thirds of the sun.

An astral photographer from Medicine Hat says it’s important to make sure that you have special gear to ensure that you don’t damage your eyes during the viewing.

“And you always need shades, special shades. So we have like these- these are the eclipse viewers. You can wear those. Like this, these ones work. And also a welding shade works too. It has to be number 14, though. It can’t be any other number. I prefer the welding shade because it’s glass and it just gives better contrast. That’s pretty much the only way you can watch it with your eyes. You can project the image of the sun safely on with binoculars. You just point the binoculars to the sun and then you get a projection of the image and you can put it on a piece of paper. And then also, if you do this with your hand like this, if you go like this on a sunny day and you can see the solar eclipse on the ground there with your hands, it kind of makes that. Or just take something, go to the kitchen and get a bowl with the little pinholes in them and just shine them on the sun. And then you can see that too. You can little really cool, interesting ways. So you can do that,” says Lukas Gornisiewicz.

The Lethbridge Astronomy Society will also be hosting a special viewing party for the partial solar eclipse on Saturday morning.

For more information on the event you can visit https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/partial-solar-eclipse-tickets-733465243287?aff=oddtdtcreator