So I bought 2 sets because it looked like one set was briefly lost in the mail and this past week I got an email from Amazon that said one set I bought were “fakes.”

  • Both sets have printing that matches legitimate manufactures.
  • The “legitimate” set have all black filters (not the metalized filters I am used to like Thousand Oaks Optical) the “fakes” have the metalized filters.
  • Both sets of glasses have the same transmittance as the Thousand Oaks filter material I use on my telescope and cameras.
  • The build quality of the “legitimate” glasses is quite a bit worse than the “fakes” with the two layers of paper being misaligned

So, what I suspect is that I actually received a crappy set of “real” glasses and a well made set of counterfeits, this seems in line with the press release made by the American Astronomical Scociety.[0]

Some of these newly identified counterfeits are indistinguishable from genuine Qiwei products and appear to be safe. Others look like Qiwei’s eclipse glasses, but when you put them on, you realize they are no darker than ordinary sunglasses. So, these products are not just counterfeit, but also fake –– they’re sold as eclipse glasses, but they are not safe for solar viewing.

So, did anyone get unlucky enough to get some ‘real-fake’ glasses? An did anyone get a set of legitimate glasses with the non-metalized filter?

[0] https://aas.org/press/american-astronomical-society-warns-counterfeit-fake-eclipse-glasses

  • KittenBiscuits@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    7 months ago

    I’m driving about 15 hours (over 2 days, not all at once, lol) from Virginia to the totality path with a “just ok” forecast. I made a similar trip in 2017. It is definitely not the same as looking at a picture. It’s the changes in atmosphere, the insects’ behavior, the light quality all around you that make a totality viewing special. If you can make it somewhere with decent enough skies, you will be glad you did.