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Re: (meteorobs) Aids for night vision?
>Whilst most of the adjustment for differing light levels is done in the
>retina, expanding the pupil to a larger size *might* have some value, if
>it doesn't produce poorer images. I'm not sure if the fully dark adapted
>eye can have the pupil further enlarged, although with the pupil typically
>dilating less far with age, perhaps older folks could benefit? Anyway,
>an extract from Deadly Nightshade, belladonna (beautiful lady) was long used
>as an eye drop, not for better night vision, but to enlarge the pupil and
>increase the appearance of beauty. The pupil enlarges with interpersonal
>attraction and sexual arousal, and it is well defined that people with
>artificially enlarged pupils are seen as more attractive. This also applies
>to advertisments where pupil size is enlarged to produce a more positive
>reaction by viewers.
For what its worth, I was always curious about the eye drops used by
optometrists to dilate the pupil. A few years ago I suffered an eye
injury that had me going back fairly often for checkups. I finally
began scheduling them for the evening, to avoid missing work. On
several occasions, my pupils were still fully dilated when I got home
and the skies were dark AND clear. Where I expected to see fainter
stars than ever before, I saw a sky full of fuzzy blobs. So the
lesson here is that fully dilated pupils are not good for observing,
unless, of course, the drops were causing something else to happen in
addition to the pupil dilation.
Gary
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