[Deejax]

Looking directly into the sun does no damage if you do it for a few seconds. After a minute damage is likely and after ten minutes certain. A simple filter which decreases the intensity by a factor 10 makes it safe enough to look into the sun. You won't see anything though. When you want to see details, like sunspots, you need to diminish the intensity by approximately 1,000,000 times. Therefore you need filters to look into the sun.

It doesn't matter whether you look into a small part of the sun (just before or after eclipse) or into a totally uneclipsed sun. Only the area of damage in your eye gets bigger, not the time it takes.

There a various filters. Best known (in the netherlands, at least) are the eclipse glasses. These were designed to allow you to look when the sun is not (yet) eclipsed totally. When the sun is totally eclipsed you don't need them anymore. (somewhat logical)

A different, and readily available, method is looking through a CD. Or two CD's to be precise, one for each eye. And I mean looking through the CD material, i.e. the shiny bit, NOT through the hole. It works best with CD's that have little or no print. I only know that standard music CD do the trick. I don't know whether CD-R, CD-RW or computer CD's work too.

You can see the effect by looking at a light bulb. When you look at a light bulb without filter, the only thing you see is .. light (duh). But when you use a filter, like a CD, you can see the wire, the source of the light.

The problem with welding glasses is that they do not filter the entire spectrum. I do not remember exacly which wavelength they let through but I believe it was a part of the UV.