I was driving east the other morning, as the sun was rising. It wasn’t precisely in front of me, but a little to the right. Now, we all know not to stare directly at the sun, but I can’t help wondering whether this sort of peripheral staring could cause damage in a peripheral area of my retina? On the other hand, I’m also thinking that if that were the case, we’d all have blind spots all around our field of vision. So is this something we need to be concerned with?
Can’t help, but I’ve often wondered the exact same thing. To the point where I obsessively try and turn my head as to avoid any rogue sunlight entering the corner of my eye. I’m sure this is completely unnecessary, but it just freaks me out!
IANAD, but I think the pain in your eye/eyes would cause you to turn away from the sun before permanent damage was done.
My own fuzzy understanding of this is that bright sunlight isn’t good for your eyes because the UV will fry your retinas, but not frying the centre of your retinas is more important than not frying the sides. If you have even a small blind spot in the middle of your field of vision it will be very noticeable, but on your peripheral vision it might not be. So people are advised to take more precautions with their central vision than they NEED to, strictly speaking, because damaging it really sucks.
All of this goes without saying, but my question is: Why don’t we all have blind spots in our peripheral vision, from all the times (e.g. when driving) we’ve stared peripherally at the sun?