Dr Joseph Allen

Where in there?

No.

So the colored part is the iris, but the light going through the eye is magnified so strongly by the cornea and the lens inside the eye that ends up focusing on the part of the eye called the fovea or the macula.

which is at the back of the- It's in the back part of the eye.

Imagine if we were gonna play darts.

We're gonna go to the pub, we're gonna throw darts.

The center bullseye of the eye

called the macula, that part is your reason you see so sharply.

It's the part of the eye that you're using when you're reading words, when you're studying, when you're looking at your friends and family in the face.

You're using that bull's eye in the back of the eye.

So when someone looks at the sun, they're putting all of that light energy focused right in that area.

And in just a few seconds, you can overwhelm that tissue, causing chemical damage to the retina.

That is usually in some sort of either religious or spiritual practice, people will gaze toward the sun.

Usually, from my understanding, it's people doing it in the early morning or late afternoon when the sun is largely going down the horizon.

And because the light is indirectly being bent, perhaps it's not giving as much energy to cause thermochemical damage to the back of the eye.

But there is still a high risk.

And so it's always best to not stare directly into the sun or try to look off-center from it.

And especially during the high UV times of the day, you know, 10 to 4 p.m.

usually, it's good to be wearing UV light protection.

Not just because UV can penetrate into the eye, but because UV light damages the skin of the eyelid.