Is it safe to view a solar eclipse with eyeglasses along with eclipse glasses?

Question

In an article on Ars Technica about safely viewing a solar eclipse, they say this:

First, what not to do: Don’t view the eclipse with your naked eye or unfiltered telescopes, binoculars, sunglasses (yeah, even if they’re really dark), camera lenses, or other optics devices. Don’t use anything that focuses light, even if you’re wearing eclipse glasses.

This may sound like a stupid question, but are eyeglasses (by which I mean, lenses to correct poor vision) safe to wear during an eclipse along with eclipse glasses? I don't know if the light focusing is strong enough to be concerned about.

Answer 1

Yes, it's safe :). Your eyeglasses are just correcting your vision. The net effect is just to give the equivalent of normal vision - and in any case, you'd normally be holding the eclipse glasses in front of your eyeglasses, in the same way that front-of-scope solar filters work to reduce the incoming light to a safe level.

Even if you're longsighted (which uses converging (positive) lenses to correct your vision, the glasses are close enough to your eye that you're nowhere near the focal point - so the light doesn't get concentrated much (and probably gets unconcentrated again by your eye, anyway).

If you're shortsighted, like me, your glasses will be diverging (negative) lenses which spread the light out rather than concentrating it (and again, are close enough to your eye that's there's not enough distance for it to affect things much.

Answer 2

Yes, it is fine to wear eclipse glasses over your eyeglasses. What the article in Ars Technica is talking about is looking through a telescope with eclipse glasses. The telescope would focus the light, burning right through the eclipse glasses. But wearing normal eyeglasses behind eclipse glasses is perfectly fine.