Solar eclipse burned wound on a woman’s retina

Like so many others, 26-year-old Nia Payne wanted to view August’s historic solar eclipse but didn’t have a pair of protective glasses. She walked outside on Staten Island and glanced at the sun — 70 percent was covered — for about six seconds before deciding she needed eye protection.

She borrowed a pair of what looked like eclipse glasses from someone nearby, then looked directly at the sun for 15 to 20 seconds.

They weren’t the right glasses.

For two days after, Payne saw a black spot, shaped like a crescent similar to the eclipse itself, in the center of her vision. Finally, she went to the emergency room and was referred to the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai, where doctors performed a detailed scan of her retinas.

What they found astonished them and led to a study they published Thursday in JAMA Ophthalmology.

The black spot in her vision and the corresponding damage on her retina were mirror images of the eclipse itself. It proved that scientists’ “intuitions were correct” in their theories of how the sun damages the eye, Avnish Deobhakta, assistant professor of ophthalmology at Mount Sinai and co-author of the study, told The Washington Post in a phone interview.

Doctors have long known of solar retinopathy, which is a “rare form of retinal injury that results from direct sungazing,” the study noted. It occurs when the sun’s energy essentially burns the retina. It can happen even when the sun is obscured by the moon during a solar eclipse, because many of sun’s rays still reach the Earth.

The Mount Sinai doctors quickly diagnosed Payne with this injury, which was much worse in her left eye.

They asked her to draw the black spot she saw on a piece of paper. It was a crescent that looked a lot like the eclipse itself.

The doctors decided to take a closer look.

As of now, this sort of damage is irreversible. Payne currently is training herself to mainly focus with her right eye.