With the eclipse on Monday, everyone knows that it's dangerous to stare directly at the sun. 

"One of the things that we forget is that the retina which is the length of the tissue in the back of the eye, can be damaged with out you feeling any pain. When you're looking directly at the sun you can be doing a lot of damage to your eye without even realizing it. You can develop something called Solar Retinopathy and that injury can actually become permanent and cause vision loss in your central vision, explained Dr. Sarah Sliva an Optometrist with the South East Eyecare Clinic. 

"The SAO which is the Saskatchewan  Association of Optometrists and the CAO the Canadian Association of Optometrists is really stressing that people do not look directly at the sun for any length of time without using approved solar eclipse viewers. There are certain safety standards that these glasses or these viewers have to meet and so there's an international standard number that's been  certified to protect your eyes when looking at an eclipse and there are some reputable sellers that do sell those." 

"I think people are always tempted to try to find the cheapest solution for these things but you really want to make sure if you're buying these things online or anywhere, that they're meeting the appropriate safety standards," she stated. 

ISO approved solar eclipse glasses must meet specific safety standards which include no more than 0.00032% of the sun's light may be transmitted through the filters, the filters must be free of any scratches, bubbles and dents, handheld viewers must be large enough to cover both eyes and labels on the viewers or the packaging need to have the name of the manufacturer, instructions for safe use and warnings of the dangers of improper use.

The Canada Space Agency website includes instructions for making your own pinhole viewer at home.

"One of the things that people can do if they don't have the viewers is to look through a pinhole projector and the CAO does have some length to where we can provide with that information to on how to make those as well. Personally I think the best thing to do is to watch it online, NASA is going to be streaming it live and that's going to guarantee the safest way to view the eclipse," expressed Dr. Sliva. 

Even though it may seem tempting to take a quite glance at the eclipse, people are advised not to. 

"Not without the appropriate eye wear unfortunately even for just a fraction of a second, the potential to damage your vision is just not worth the risk. Our eyes are an important part of what we do in a day, our vision is so absolutely paramount to what we do in our lives that it's just not really worth the risk of causing any damage. The best thing to do is either use the approved eclipse viewers or just watch it online." 

"We all have a bit of a fear of missing out on things but it's not good to take any risks with your eye health or your vision, so no sneaking peeks you've got to be really careful and again the biggest concern I would have is with kids. As adults we're all aware of the risks of what we do but kids maybe aren't as aware of that and so if people are using the approved eclipse viewers or any other method to view the eclipse and you  have young kids with you, it's important to really make sure that they're not sneaking a peek even for a second because kids move pretty fast and we don't want them damaging their precious eyesight either," she mentioned. 

"The sun isn't going to be necessarily as bright during that eclipse moment, people may not be aware that it still has the capability to cause some damage. We've all been sunburned on a cloudy day when we thought we were safe and like I said the retina doesn't have the same pain receptors, so you won't know that you've caused damage to your eyes until unfortunately the damage is already done." 

While keeping these safety tips in mind, the solar eclipse will be a spectacular event to view. 

"It's a really neat event and I think a lot of people are going to be really excited to watch it, I know I plan on watching it by the NASA streaming  and that's how I;m going to show my kids because then that way I don't have to worry about them sneaking a peek and accidentally doing some damage to their eyes." 

"The other thing to keep in mind too is that if people are worried that they have caused damage to their eyes, a visit to their optometrist should defiantly be done relatively quickly after so that we can check for damage and make sure that we know exactly what's going on there as well," explained Dr. Sliva. 

For more information about the solar eclipse as well as the count down click here.