Safety & ISO certification

Eclipse Glasses: Safety & ISO certification

Safety First!

Introduction

Looking at the sun is dangerous, and can cause serious eye damage!

You may not realize this, but you actually never look at the Sun, and when you do, you will be blinded and see after-images for quite some time. So, please do not do this, as we said: looking at the sun is dangerous! This page explains in more detail how to view the sun in a safe way, and it gives details about our ISO certified glasses. Yes, our glasses are safe, and we had them independently tested at an accredited testing lab!

Never Ever...

As stated, you should not look at the sun without protection, because you run significant risk to cause damage to your eyes. Specifically, your retinas will get damaged, and they do not heal. Once the damage is done, you cannot get it fixed and you will have damaged retinas for the rest of your life.

But... looking through binoculars and/or a telescope is WAY worse! NEVER EVER look at the sun through binoculars or a telescope, because you run a serious risk to cause blindness. This is truly dangerous and results in very serious damage. Don't do it!

But I want to see the eclipse!?

Thankfully there are safe ways to observe the sun, and one solution are eclipse glasses. Just like a welder needs to protect his/her eyes from the welding arc using a welding helmet, there are tools available to safely observe the sun. (btw if you have a welding helmet, that is perfectly suited to look safely at the sun and you do not need eclipse glasses!)

ISO Certification

In order to be sure our glasses are safe, we have two sources for you; first is the official ISO test report, secondly, is our listing as a source for safe glasses by the American Astronomical Society (AAS). We'll describe them both below.

ICS Logo from our ISO
test report

Our own ISO test report

In order to make sure Eclipse Glasses adhere to all standards and can receive ISO certification, the need to be tested by a certified laboratory. In our case we contracted with ICS Laboratories to perform this test for us. Please note, we asked ICS for an independent test; we did not rely on any test provided by the manufacturer of the glasses. We wanted to be 100% sure our glasses are safe and reliable, and the only way to do that is to pay for our own independent lab test!

The main thing that the testing lab performs, is a test to see how much of the damaging Ultra Violet (UV) light is blocked by the glasses. This test result is shown in the graph on the left. Although, explaining exactly what the meaning of the lines are, is beyond the scope of this website, the good news is that our glasses passed all tests and are officially ISO certified!

To view the entire test report, please click here.

The American Astronomical Society (AAS)

Although the official test report we have linked above, it will be quite difficult for non-professionals to understand what this all means, or even to tell if this report is genuine. For this reason we sent the report to the American Astronomical Society (AAS) for evaluation by professional astronomers and they have reviewed the report for it's authenticity, and we are happy to say we are listed as "Safe Vendor" of Eclipse Glasses.