The Great American Eclipse is coming. Are you prepared?

EVANSVILLE, Ind. (WFIE) - One eye doctor is giving advice on how to protect your eyes and enjoy the eclipse at the same time.

The countdown is on until the Great American Solar Eclipse when Evansville goes dark. It’s a sight you won’t want to miss, but you’ll have to keep your eyes protected, and your average sunglasses won’t cut it.

Special eclipse glasses are blacked out and will work during the eclipse.

“If there’s any type of defect in that protective layer of lens, you can still get harmful rays through that,” said ophthalmologist Dr. Gregory Hayden.

Hayden says without eclipse glasses on, those harmful rays could burn your retinas in a matter of seconds.

“It can take several months to make as much recovery as you might and you may not make a recovery from it,” said Hayden.

Without using eclipse glasses, you can cause permanent damage to your eyes you may not even realize you’ve done.

“The retina doesn’t have pain receptors so you can’t feel the damage is happening at the time and you may not know you’ve damaged your eyes until hours later or the next day,” said Hayden.

To stay safe, Hayden says the only time you should take off your glasses, is during the three to four minutes of totality.

“Immediately upon the sunlight starting to peek around that eclipse again, the glasses need to go back on,” said Hayden.

If your glasses stay on and aren’t damaged, your eyes will be guarded.

“It’s something we should all enjoy, because we only get to see this maybe a few times in our lifetime,” said Hayden. “I hope everybody gets out to enjoy that but we want to make sure we’re protecting our eyes while doing it.”

Click here to buy a pair of eclipse glasses.

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