The solar eclipse burned a crescent onto the retina of a woman who wasn’t wearing safe enough glasses while watching the event back in August, permanently affecting her vision.
The Washington Post reported 26-year-old Nia Payne caused irreversible damage to her eyesight on Aug. 21 after she looked directly into the sun for about 15 to 20 seconds while wearing what she thought were eclipse glasses loaned by someone nearby.
Within hours she started to experience blurry vision and could also see a “central black spot” with her left eye, People magazine reported.
After a trip to the emergency rooms, Payne was referred to the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai, where detailed scans of her retinas were performed and it was discovered that the black spot in her vision was an exact mirror image of the eclipse.
Astonished with their findings, scientists published a detailed study on Thursday in JAMA Ophthalmology.
Avnish Deobhakta, assistant professor of ophthalmology at Mount Sinai and co-author of the study, told the Post that the find confirmed what scientists had suspected the whole time about how the sun damages the eye.
According to the study, Payne was diagnosed with acute solar retinopathy, which essentially is damage to the retina caused by solar radiation.
Researchers were able to make the conclusion through the use of an adaptive optics machine which captured detailed images of the damaged cells in the photoreceptor layer of the retina, CNN reported.
"We could see a robust concordance between the shape of the exposed sun during the eclipse and the damage to cells in the photoreceptor layer," Deobhakta said, adding that detailed imaging of the photoreceptor layer showed a crescent shape of damage.
“That really has never been able to be seen before. Our intuitions are shown to be correct by this very precise technology,” Deobhakta said, per CNN.
Researchers believe their discovery may be the first step in developing a treatment for the injury, which is a permanent condition that currently has no treatment, Post said.
For now Payne has to make do with training to mainly focus with her right eye. Unfortunately simple things like watching the television and reading have now become a challenge.
"So far, it's a nightmare, and sometimes it makes me very sad when I close my eyes and see it," Payne told CNN. “It's something I have to live with for the rest of my life.”
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