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.

bogwalrus

endacl wrote: »

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.

I sorry if I angered you but I was following on a point from the other poster who also thought that it was silly to think that you can go blind from staring at the sun setting. Nothing to do with the whole staring at the sun with Binoculars, that is obviously silly etc.

Its seems you just had to let off steam there. That's fine, I understand your analogy.

Now Its obvious you should not stare at the sun. We all know this but i feel 90% of the population of the planet have all watched on a few occassions in their life those few minutes of a sunset or sunrise where you cant feel the intensity of the sun.


A link to a reliable source explaining reasons why one should not stare at a setting/rising sun would be really great and nip it in the bud for me but google is failing me on this one as most answers are that yes it is fine to do the above.

No need to get angry again cause as you said this is very serious and i don't think its fair to be scaremongering if you can in fact stare at the sun setting etc.

bogwalrus

endacl wrote: »

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

Take it up with the smart folks at NASA....[/QUOTE]



you see your comment here. Id love a link rather than just a comment like above because i would say the majority of people think its ok to stare at a sunset etc.

endacl

bogwalrus wrote: »

endacl wrote: »

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.

I sorry if I angered you but I was following on a point from the other poster who also thought that it was silly to think that you can go blind from staring at the sun setting. Nothing to do with the whole staring at the sun with Binoculars, that is obviously silly etc.

Its seems you just had to let off steam there. That's fine, I understand your analogy.

Now Its obvious you should not stare at the sun. We all know this but i feel 90% of the population of the planet have all watched on a few occassions in their life those few minutes of a sunset or sunrise where you cant feel the intensity of the sun.


A link to a reliable source explaining reasons why one should not stare at a setting/rising sun would be really great and nip it in the bud for me but google is failing me on this one as most answers are that yes it is fine to do the above.

No need to get angry again cause as you said this is very serious and i don't think its fair to be scaremongering if you can in fact stare at the sun setting etc.

Apologies there Bogwalrus. Don't think that was actually aimed at you. Tapping away here on a phone. Just launched it into the first available post. Bad manners on my part...

bogwalrus

Batsy wrote: »

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

It seems you are correct to a degree where you can observe the sun for a few minutes at both sunrise and sunser but there are notes i have found in other documents on the internet saying to not do it all the time just in case the sun has a "blue flash moment" which can happen randomly so it seems.


In fact, in the article �Eye protective techniques for bright light,� published in Ophthalmology 90, 937-944 (1983), David H. Sliney wrote:

When the sun is low in the sky it is yellow or orange indicating that the hazardous blue light has been scattered out of the direct path of sunlight, and the sun may be fixated for many minutes without risk. It's worth going through the numbers for this situation, because there is a very large and rapid change in the brightness of the Sun near sunset.

gkell2

endacl wrote: »

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.....

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.

Ah,but you see,it was politics and religion that was central to the implosion of Western astronomy and the impinging of mechanical astronomy (Ra/Dec system) on interpretative astronomy is an issue of the utmost priority arising from politics and denominational Christianity.It is fine that empiricists rewrote history to suit themselves in context of what they see as science vs religion or what unfortunate people presently see as a barely disguised view of the enlightened (empiricism) vs the superstitious (Christianity) but the fact is that the technical and historical details far surpass any individual here to view and deal with the matter properly,at least that is how its looks at the moment.

Even if the arguments didn't become explicit until Flamsteed's time in the late 17th century in terms of distinguishing interpretative astronomy from mechanical predictive astronomy,any person who adheres to the theory that it is possible to explain daily and orbital motions through the stellar circumpolar framework of right ascension,and this the main objection inherent in the Pope's view even if it didn't surface for a century and a half,is not proving the Earth turns and orbits the Sun.

I have to take the following author's description at his word but it looks about right to me.Galileo was a smart guy,that much is true but so also is the Pope and unlike any reader here,he could spot Galileo's betrayal in putting his arguments in the mouth of a fictional fool 'Simplicio' -

"In 1623 Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, a Florentine who had praised Galileo’s achievements, was elected Pope under the name of Urban VIII. Galileo had recently helped his nephew, Francesco Barberini, obtain his doctorate at the University of Pisa, and the Cardinal had written to express his appreciation. The postscript to his letter, which is in his own hand, leaves no doubt about his feelings. ‘I am much in your debt,’ he writes, ‘for your abiding goodwill towards myself and the members of my family, and I look forward to the opportunity of reciprocating. I assure you that you will find me more than willing to be of service in consideration of your great merit and the gratitude that I owe you.’ 4 Events moved rapidly, and less than two months after writing this letter, Maffeo Barberini had become Urban VIII, and was about to appoint his nephew, then only twenty-seven years old, to the College of Cardinals. Francesco became the Pope’s right hand.

Two close friends of Galileo, Giovanni Ciampoli and Virginio Cesarini, were also named to important posts. Cesarini was appointed Lord Chamberlain, and Ciampoli Secret Chamberlain and Secretary for the Correspondence with Princes. Under these favourable auspices Galileo thought the moment had come to renew his campaign for Copernicanism, and in 1624 he set off for Rome where he had the rare privilege of being received by the Pope six times in six weeks. Although the 1616 decree of the Index against Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus was not suspended, Galileo felt that he could now argue for the motion of the Earth as long as he avoided declaring that it was the only system that fitted astronomical observations.

Here lurked the danger of serious misunderstanding. Maffeo Barberini, while he was a Cardinal, had counselled Galileo to treat Copernicanism as a hypothesis, not as a confirmed truth. But ‘hypothesis’ meant two very different things. On the one hand, astronomers were assumed to deal only with hypotheses, i.e. accounts of the observed motions of the stars and planets that were not claimed to be true. Astronomical theories were mere instruments for calculation and prediction, a view that is often called ‘instrumentalism’. On the other hand, a hypothesis could also be understood as a theory that was not yet proved but was open to eventual confirmation. This was a ‘realist’ position. Galileo thought that Copernicanism was true, and presented it as a hypothesis, i.e. as a provisional idea that was potentially physically true, and he discussed the pros and cons, leaving the issue undecided. This did not correspond to the instrumentalist view of Copernicanism that was held by Maffeo Barberini and others. They thought that Copernicus’ system was a purely instrumental device, and Maffeo Barberini was convinced that it could never be proved. This ambiguity pervaded the whole Galileo Affair."

http://www.unav.es/cryf/newlightistanbul.html

In short,you cannot,I repeat,cannot justify daily and orbital motions using a stellar circumpolar framework or the 'inertial reference frame' as it is called today otherwise astronomy becomes largely unimportant stuff with no intellectual depth..

The power of contemporary imaging and even the ability to observe the Earth from space does away with almost all those arguments that people in Galileo's time found necessary yet the problem remains that contemporaries retain the flawed arguments inherent in Ra/ Dec reasoning !.In this respect,no matter what images are brought before individuals they positively refuse to interpret them properly so before you invoke Galileo again as being smart,mark well how he judged people who couldn't interpret the motions in the celestial arena with the care and attention needed to demonstrate insights -

"My dear Kepler, I wish that we might laugh at the remarkable stupidity of the common herd. What do you have to say about the principal philosophers of this academy who are filled with the stubbornness of an asp and do not want to look at either the planets, the moon or the telescope, even though I have freely and deliberately offered them the opportunity a thousand times? Truly, just as the asp stops its ears, so do these philosophers shut their eyes to the light of truth." Galileo

If you want to follow the herd and imagine a Church clinging desperately to the Earth as the center of the Universe then be my guest,there are also people here who imagine that religion is based on 'fairies in the sky' but this dumbing down of astronomy and its historical and technical details is only a recent development,mostly by people who think themselves largely important.

Rubecula

PLEASE

No more stupid "I looked at the sun through binos and feel fine" posts. :mad:

If anyone wants to be bloody stupid and risk frying their eyes that is your choice. You have been told it is silly and you know it is silly. So stop posting such garbage on a public forum before someone gets hurt. :mad:

endacl

Rubecula wrote: »

PLEASE

No more stupid "I looked at the sun through binos and feel fine" posts. :mad:

If anyone wants to be bloody stupid and risk frying their eyes that is your choice. You have been told it is silly and you know it is silly. So stop posting such garbage on a public forum before someone gets hurt. :mad:

Well put. And that about wraps it up. I look forward to chatting to everybody again in the 'running with scissors' thread...