The Eye

John K Clark (johnkc@well.com)
Sun, 25 Jan 1998 21:45:50 -0800 (PST)


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Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se> On 25 Jan 1998 Wrote:

>According to my office-mate Mikael, the acuity of the fovea is
>apparently higher than expected just by seeing each receptor cell as
>a 'pixel', it is smaller than their receptice fields! (I don't know
>how it is done).

I can think of one way. If an on-off photo receptor has a field of view
X degrees wide and you want to know where a star is to better accuracy than X,
then turn your receptor 1/2 X degrees to the right, if you still register a
pixel then the star must have been in the right half of the original field of
view, if not then it was in the left.

If we couldn't move our eyes but had to move our entire head I think we'd end
up with some very tired and sore neck muscles or we'd be virtually blind.

John K Clark johnkc@well.com

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