Eye Floaters

[Darren B]

Floaters are one thing, I have a piece of loose jelly in my right eye that has to be check once a year. The hospital won't do anything about it unless it causes a cataract.

If I move my eyeballs left to right a few times quickly, It looks like someone squished a spider on my eyeball and it still kicking it legs about .

It destroy the view in an eyepiece, though with a binoview it looks like frogspawn.

[Muphrid]

Floaters are one thing, I have a piece of loose jelly in my right eye that has to be check once a year. The hospital won't do anything about it unless it causes a cataract.

If I move my eyeballs left to right a few times quickly, It looks like someone squished a spider on my eyeball and it still kicking it legs about .

It destroy the view in an eyepiece, though with a binoview it looks like frogspawn.

I don't understand how it could cause a cataract, since this is a hardening and clouding of the crystalline lens.

[Steve]

I notice them when the exit pupil of the scope / eyepiece combination gets too small.

If you close your living-room curtains on a bright sunny day, leaving a small gap, then sunlight streams through the gap highlighting every speck of dust that floats through the beam. If you widen the gap in the curtains the beam of sunlight widens and you don't notice the dust. It is the same with eyepieces and floaters. High magnification eyepieces produce smaller exit-pupil diamaters (diamater of the beam of light as it exits the eyepiece) which makes floaters more noticeable as they float through the beam.

The answer is to use telescopes with greater apertures and longer focal length as they enable high magnifications without resorting to short focal length eyepieces so have wider exit pupil diamaters.

HTH

[John]

...The answer is to use telescopes with greater apertures and longer focal length as they enable high magnifications without resorting to short focal length eyepieces so have wider exit pupil diamaters.

HTH

Thanks Steve - very helpful

I will now have to sell all my scopes though as they are all rather short

I do quite fancy a Celeston C9.25 though

[calluml314]

I've seen these a couple times before and had no idea what they were, it must be horrible having them in your vision 24/7.

[x6gas]

These move downwards slowly because the AH is liquid and the floaters - cells etc that have been shed by the interior of the anterior region simply drift down.

Interesting. Given that the image is projected upside-down on the retina, does that mean that floaters sinking down would actually appear to be going up?

Think mine must be the second type as they just seem to swim around!

[jkwhinfrey]

I've started noticing them this year whilst looking at Jupiter

The surgeon at Sapphire replaced the lenses in both my eyes earlier this year - what a difference! I guess that means I have Mk II eyeballs

But that's got to be the ultimate eye piece upgrade!

[Muphrid]

Interesting. Given that the image is projected upside-down on the retina, does that mean that floaters sinking down would actually appear to be going up?

No, because your brain turns everything right way up.

[JamesC]

but why do our brains bother to flip things around? What the problem with our feet appearing to be above us or out to the side for that matter? My thoughts are all in a spin, but everything is stubbornly the right way round...

[CJBooth]

I've noticed these before (I'm 30 years of age) but a wiggle of the eye normally gets rid of them. I always assumed it was something on the surface of my eye. Quite unsettling to learn the truth!

[sulaco]

Oh man I hate them, especially when I look up at a blue sky or bright light colour I notice them.......just floating about.....annoying me.

[MikeWilson]

I'm 30 and I have them too! They drive me absolutely crazy.

I've learned to ignore them but they're obvious as you say with some eyepieces and bright backlit sources (or just a bright day).

As for imaging - you see the same 'dust doughnut' effect when you take flat frames.

Sent from my mobile using TapaTalk (so please excuse bad grammar & spelling!) :-)

[x6gas]

No, because your brain turns everything right way up.

But that's exactly my point. You have an image projected on your retina upsidedown and a blob of floaters floating down...

Your brain turns the projected image the right way up, but then surely that will also mean that the floaters will appear to go up, not down.

What am I missing?