Do your eyes make up stuff too?

[DaBozUK]

I noticed last night that my brain was filling in the constellation lines between stars last night, and then when looking through scope at many stars in view, I noticed my brain was doing it again but obviously they weren't constellations.

Is it normal for the brain to make up stuff like this when looking at stars?

I'm now doubting whether I can actually see disctinct speckly stars in globular clusters, and in fact it's just my brain trying to be helpful.

Boz

[DaBozUK]

Oh, just me then!

[Daniel-K]

depends on what you mean speckly stars in m13 you can resolve the out stars quite well depending on your scope you get very good veiws of globs

[david o]

No, it's not just you

The human brain is very good a seeing patterns - it's a survival trait.

Just imagine how handy it was for our ancestors to resolve some seemingly "random" splotches in the long grass into a leopard ancestor/other hunter, before it was close enough to see clearly/be dangerous !

[ollypenrice]

More than that, research shows that our eye-brain makes up an awful lot of what we think we are seeing. It turns out that the eye has only a small region capable of viewing with any quality and that as it flits around the brain fills in the quality based more on anticipation than observation. Quite disturbing!

Olly

[DaBozUK]

Glad to hear. It's useful that lines seem to appear for the constellations, but when they make up useless lines, it's like a random dot-to-dot book!