Title: A Solar Eclipse Can Blind You (Read This Before Looking at the Sun!) | Space
Headings: A Solar Eclipse Can Blind You (Read This Before Looking at the Sun!)
A Solar Eclipse Can Blind You (Read This Before Looking at the Sun!)
How eyeballs get "sunburned"
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Instinct vs. willpower
Seeing with eclipse blindness
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An unclear path to recovery
When it's safe to look
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Other safety tips

Content: "The problem when it comes to looking at a partially eclipsed sun is that you are trying to see something that you know is going on that's different, and willpower is an amazing thing to override an aversion reflex." To make matters worse, it's possible to look directly at the sun "with a certain degree of comfort" when the sun is partially covered by the moon, Chou said. Even when the sun is almost completely covered, though, the tiny crescent that remains is still bright enough to burn your retinas. You should never look directly at the sun, but there are ways to safely observe an eclipse. See how to safely observe a solar eclipse with this Space.com infographic. ( Image credit: Karl Tate, SPACE.com Contributor)
Seeing with eclipse blindness
One thing that makes eclipse blindness particularly dangerous is that a person who looks at the sun long enough to incur damage probably won't notice any of the effects until the next morning, Chou said. "Let's say you take a look at the sun in the afternoon. The cells get overloaded, and they're actually still able to function for a little while, but overnight while you're asleep … the cells start lose their function, and then they even start to die depending on exactly how badly they've been affected," he explained. People who wake up to discover their vision has become impaired may look in the mirror to find their face is a featureless blur, Chou said, or they may try to read the newspaper only to find that there are no words on the page.