Vice Style

As the summer draws to a close, the arrival of autumn implies different things for different people. For fashion folk, it means it's once again time to jet off around the world for (insert city here) Fashion Week, quaff champagne by the crate, and hang out with models. For nerds, the darkening skies signal the start of a new astronomy season, with all the fun that sitting in a cold, dark shed entails.

All the talk this year (astronomy, not fashion) is about dark adaptor goggles – a stylish way to ‘cheat’ your way to better night vision. For a while now, astronomers in the know have used red-light torches, red-ink star charts and red-tinted screens to preserve their night vision. Why? It’s all to do with the way your eyes gather light. It takes about half an hour for your eyes to adjust to total darkness, and just one beam of light from a streetlight, car headlights, or even a torch can reset the process. This is because when struck by light, the rhodopsin chemical pigment inside your eye bleaches, causing you to lose your night vision. Because red light doesn’t affect rhodopsin as quickly, this blinding action doesn’t happen with red light.

Wearing sunglasses at night doesn’t help. Instead, style-conscious stargazers are turning to forward-forward alternatives like Astro Engineering’s Nite-Saver red goggles. Moulded from a fetching turquoise plastic and emblazoned with inexplicable gold pyramids, these snazzy specs retail for a mere £19.99. Of course, you could probably fashion your own pair for even less, but given this sobering warning about going blind we wouldn’t recommend it. Happy stargazing!

CHRIS HATHERILL is co-director of super/collider