Eclipse warning: All the key signs you may have damaged your eyes

Alexander Ionides, a consultant eye surgeon at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London says if you have damaged your eyes, the symptoms will start to come on within a few hours.

“It’s a central spot in the visual field, whatever you’re looking at, if you’re looking at someone’s face, or the writing of the page or the clock on the wall, you may have a distortion.

“It’ll be a grey or a yellow or a dark spot right in the very centre of your vision.

“It doesn’t hurt, there’s no pain like what a burn might be considered to be like, and it can just very gradually come on.”

Other symptoms to be aware of include:

Ionides says if you think you have damaged your eyes, you should seek urgent medical attention.

“There are different ways to get the eyes checked out in the UK, you can always go to a local optician, they’re very well equipped now,” he added.

“They can do retinal scans to look for any solar retinopathy, which is the damage to the retina from looking at the eclipse.

“And also they can refer you on to the local eye unit. There are local eye casualties as well. And most hospitals will have an eye doctor on call.”

Because of the delay in symptoms developing it is not yet possible to say if anyone has experienced any damage to their eyes.

A partial eclipse like the one the UK experienced on Wednesday meant the sun was still pretty bright, so far fewer people may have tried to stare at it directly.

Ionides says compared to 1999, so far fewer people have contacted his hospital.

“Back in 1999, the switchboard and the casualty were inundated with many, many people coming along worried, or having had some damage.

“But so far, it’s only the morning after, but at the moment there have been a lot fewer people contacting the hospital or coming along to casualty, which might mean that the message is getting out there, that it is damaging to look directly at the sun with the naked eye.”