A frantic rush is on across the UK to find the right kind of protective eyewear ahead of Wednesday\u2019s partial solar eclipse.<\/p>\n
High street stores are running out of eclipse glasses and online shoppers who track down a pair are being told they may not reach them until the end of the week. In other words, in plenty of time for the next comparable UK eclipse \u2013 in 2081 \u2013 but no good at all for Wednesday\u2019s show.<\/p>\n
The Royal Observatory Greenwich<\/a> said it was aware of a shortage of glasses. A spokesperson said: \u201cWe have sold out of solar eclipse glasses, both online and in our shops, due to an unprecedented volume of orders.\u201d<\/p>\n Ordinary sunglasses are not safe to use and over the last few weeks consumer experts have been recommending specialised glasses<\/a>. But try to get, for example, a pack of Lunt solar eclipse glasses (\u00a314.99) on Amazon and the dispiriting message \u201cfree delivery Thursday 13 August\u201d pops up.<\/p>\n The Robert Dyas store was offering Bresser eclipse glasses for \u00a32.99, but there was an \u201cout of stock\u201d message on its website.<\/p>\n Emma, from Tonbridge in Kent, described her mission to find pairs for herself and three relatives. \u201cThey were sold out everywhere,\u201d she said. When she called her local opticians, she received short shrift. \u201cThey sounded really angry. I said: \u2018I\u2019m calling to see if you have any glasses for the \u2026\u2019 The assistant interrupted and said no and hung up.\u201d<\/p>\n Emma managed to get one from a friend whose forward-thinking mum had bought a multipack. \u201cIf we can\u2019t get any more, we\u2019ll have to share,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Neill Sanders, the founder of Go Stargazing<\/a> and the UK coordinator of Astronomers Without Borders<\/a>, said there wasn\u2019t a shortage \u2013 it was just that people had not planned ahead.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cI\u2019m getting loads of calls, text messages, emails with people asking \u2018Do you have some glasses?\u2019. Everyone\u2019s suddenly realising we need glasses for Wednesday.\u201d<\/p>\n Sanders said he had imported 300,000 pairs from the US. He had sent out 100,000 pairs in the last few weeks at discount prices to astronomy clubs and community groups but it was too late to get most of the others out.<\/p>\n Another distributor said: \u201cWe have good stocks, our issue is everybody has left it until the last minute to order and we only have so many people we can put into packing at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n Jake Foster, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, said: \u201cIf you don\u2019t have a pair of eclipse glasses, you can still view the eclipse indirectly. Any household item with small round holes in it, such as a colander or even a piece of paper with a small hole poked in it can project an image of the eclipse on to a flat surface.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t look at the sun itself but instead at the shadow that\u2019s being produced \u2013 you should be able to see the shape of the eclipse within it.\u201d<\/p>\n After the 1999 total solar eclipse, the Royal College of Ophthalmologists reported about 70 cases<\/a> of people experiencing vision problems from watching it.<\/p>\n The UK Health Security Agency<\/a> and the royal college<\/a> have issued detailed advice on their websites on the sort of glasses that are safe and other ways of watching the eclipse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A frantic rush is on across the UK to find the right kind of protective eyewear ahead of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":850531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":["post-850530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=850530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}