Gaze mechanisms enabling the detection of faint stars in the night sky

Abstract

For millennia, people have used “averted vision” to improve their detection of faint celestial objects, a technique first documented around 325 BCE. Yet, no studies have assessed gaze location during averted vision to determine what pattern best facilitates perception. Here, we characterized averted vision while recording eye‐positions of dark‐adapted human participants, for the first time. We simulated stars of apparent magnitudes 3.3 and 3.5, matching their brightness to Megrez (the dimmest star in the Big Dipper) and Tau Ceti. Participants indicated whether each star was visible from a series of fixation locations, providing a comprehensive map of detection performance in all directions. Contrary to prior predictions, maximum detection was first achieved at ~8° from the star, much closer to the fovea than expected from rod‐cone distributions alone. These findings challenge the assumption of optimal detection at the rod density peak and provide the first systematic assessment of an age‐old facet of human vision.

Regional variation in the organization and connectivity of the first synapse in the primate night vision pathway

“… 41 Hence, this could lead to regional differences in the sensitivity of RBCs and the downstream night vision circuitry. Thus, even though the central primate retina is specialized for high acuity daylight vision, we know that the dim light sensitivity of our averted vision, commonly used by stargazers to identify faint celestial objects in the night sky, peaks at a visual angle of ∼8–10° 53 which is in between what we define as parafoveal and central retina. Thus, in future studies it will be interesting to test the threshold of dim light detection of the primary night vision pathway in the primate retina at these central locations and compare how similar or dissimilar this is to peripheral retina.…”

What the Neuroscience and Psychology of Magic Reveal about Misinformation

“…The failure to notice the balls as they are secretly loaded into the transparent cups is a kind of change blindness. With change blindness, observers fail to notice that something has become different from how it was before, even if the change is dramatic or if they are looking directly at the location of the changes [45][46][47][48][49]. Moreover, even when such changes are initially noticed, memory limitations can prevent viewers from remembering the specific alterations that took place over a period of time.…”