Green indicator lights flash blue?

This may seem like a strange question and is probably more to do with physics than with cars directly..

I've noticed sometimes when the green indicator arrow is flashing on the dashboard, the instant I turn my eyes away from it, it appears to flash blue, I turn my eyes back to it and it's green again. I don't notice this very often, maybe once every couple of weeks, but it doesn't seem restricted to my own car, I've hired various cars and noticed this happening.

Any ideas to explain this phenomenon?

Reply to
Mark Hewitt
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Get an eye test and drink less.....

Andy

Reply to
Nik&Andy

you move your head so fast it blue-shifts the light?

Reply to
barry

The colour response of the eye is only correct in the centre of the field of vision. As you get towards the edge of this field, strange things can happen to colours with some before it finally goes monochrome. Try moving a green something held in your hand from in front of you to one side until it just about disappears while keeping your eyes and head front, and see if this makes it obvious.

FWIW, colour vision varies enormously from one person to the next, and many men in particular have some 'fault' or other - mainly hereditary. Especially if you have blue eyes, where there's a 30% chance it's not 'perfect'.

The old story about getting a female to choose colours has some substance...

A decent optician will have a device for testing your colour vision at the extremities.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Yeah, but Misty Buff and Twilight Mauve are not real colours.

Reply to
DocDelete

Your peripheral vision is colour blind???

Reply to
Taz

The colour sensitive cells in your retina which are responsive to green light become 'tired' if they are exposed to green light for a length of time. When you look away they take time to recover and any other colour you look at will not look as it should because you are not seeing the green properly.

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Regards

Stuart.

Reply to
Stuart

Yes. My father suffers from this - it is also apparantly tied in with astigmatism.

Reply to
Chris Street

Interesting. Source? I'm rather astigmatic - cured rather nicely with hard contact lenses - but when checked had good peripheral colour vision. Of course astigmatism is also hereditary, so might well be combined with other 'faults'.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

He has blue green colour blindness in the centre field as well so that could be a reason. I'm thinking more of chromatic abberation exacerbated by his astigmatism which is reasonably severe.

Reply to
Chris Street

The message from "Dave Plowman (News)" contains these words:

I have truly awful colour vision, but my astigmatism isn't that bad.

Reply to
Guy King

Contact lenses form an 'extension' to the cornea and should sort most chromatic aberrations quite well. Preferably gas permeable ones which being rigid always give a correctly shaped lens. The gap between the irregular front of the cornea you get with astigmatism and the uniform back of the contact lens is filled with tears, so although we're talking about three different lots of refractive indices, in practice it's rather better than specs. IMHO.

Of course, if some of the astigmatism is 'residual' ie, on the back of the cornea, a spherical lens won't sort it. But toric lenses can. Fortunately, large errors due to this are fairly rare.

'Hard' contact lenses require some getting used to - unlike the well advertised soft types. But after that running in period - say a couple of weeks - have the advantage of much lower running costs through longer life, and a much reduced chance of eye infections. They also rarely need a change in prescription - unlike specs. I've had the same prescription for near 30 years - but now need specs for reading.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

I tested that, looked at one thing with some green in the extreme of my vision, and it still appeared green. I then put some green and some blue together, and I could still see the difference between the colours.

It seems to only happen the instant my head is moving away from the dash to look at the road and at the same time the indication is cancelled. It's not something I've found a way to reproduce.

Reply to
Mark Hewitt

Mine tends to see bright lights as red.

If there's a flashing green LED, and I look away, my very peripheral vision will see the flash as red, but only if it flashes. If it's on solid, I'll see it as green.

Pete.

Reply to
Pete Smith

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