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Be Smart: A Partial Eclipse Can Fry Your Naked Eyes

And telescopes and binoculars only amplify the risk to your eyes from looking at the sun, doctors say. So even if you're not in the "path of totality," take precautions if you plan to watch.
<em>Left:</em> A partial solar eclipse, as viewed from the Cotswolds, United Kingdom, March 2015. <em>Right:</em> A total solar eclipse, as viewed from Longyearbyen, Norway, March 2015.

The day of the long-awaited coast-to-coast solar eclipse has all but arrived — and if history is any guide, it's likely that somebody's eyes are going to get hurt.

"The ones we're really concerned about are the people who have never seen an eclipse before — or just decided that, you know, 'Today is a nice day to go take I get worried," says , an optometrist and vision scientist at the University of Waterloo in Canada. He has seen 18 total solar eclipses.

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