Watching the eclipse? Specific specs protect your eyes

Planning to watch Monday's solar eclipse on your own? Special solar eyeglasses might be on the pricey side. But, beware of bargain-basement specs. They might leave you at risk of much more costly blindness.

According to the U.S. Fire Administration, vendors are trying to cash in on the August 21 spectacle by hawking counterfeit...spectacles. Kevin Esposito, Fire Official of the Toms River Bureau of Fire Prevention, echoes the warning.

"The only glasses and viewers you should use...are those verified by an accredited testing laboratory to meet ISO 12313-2 standards," he said. "This standard requires lenses to be thousands of times darker than typical sunglasses.

So how do you know which to trust? Esposito recomments scanning the list of reputable solar-spec vendors on the American Astronomical Society's web page. For more handy tips, visit NASA's Eclipse 2017 page.