34 September 2014 sky & telescopeClear Eyes
IMAGINE SMEARING VASELINE all over your primary
mirror, then smashing it into several pieces. The view
through your eyepiece would not be pretty: it would be
fuzzy and broken into multiple images. Cataracts do that
to your vision. Everything looks like that. Unfortunately,
if you live long enough, you’re almost certain to develop
cataracts (see the box on page 35). Environmental fac-
tors, including ultraviolet light from the Sun, gradually
destroy the structure of lens proteins, clouding the lens
and obstructing vision. Though commonly found in the
elderly, cataracts have a number of causes; even newborn
babies can have cataracts.Clearing the Clouds:
Cataract Surgery
for Astronomers
One amateur’s journey through the medical maze of cataract surgery
has lessons for any observer facing the same condition.
Kathy & Jerry Oltion
Coauthor Kathy’s cataracts developed in her early 50s,
just a few years after we became amateur astronomers.
She started seeing multiple images of planets and fuzzy
halos surrounding bright stars. The brighter the object,
the worse it looked. Her eyeglass prescription began to
change, skewing radically toward nearsightedness.
Fortunately, cataract surgery has become routine; a
surgeon can simply remove the cloudy lens and implant
a new one, and then you can go on as if nothing had ever
happened, right?
Wrong. That myth applies only if you don’t pay much
attention to your vision. If patients don’t know what a✷
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