[AZ-Observing] Re: Telrad stellar limit

A few months ago, one of the "learning" channels-- Discovery Channel,
History Channel, whatever-- did a program in which they touched on why
pirates wore an eye patch even if they had two good eyes. It seems that when
the boarded a ship they wanted to capture, they had to scurry down below to
get to the majority of the crew.  The hold of the ship was dark, and coming
down from a sunlit deck put them at a huge disadvantage.  So they wore a
patch over one eye so when they got below, they could remove the patch and
see well enough in the dark hold to fight effectively.  

Sounds odd-- maybe it's true. I don't know if any pirates left us any
research on the topic!


Richard Harshaw
Cave Creek, AZ


-----Original Message-----
From: az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Workman, Brian
(AZ76)
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 1:02 PM
To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [AZ-Observing] Re: Telrad stellar limit

=20

> exposure of one eye to bright light leaves the other other eye
unaffected (at least as regards pupil size) is incorrect.=20

This is interesting. When I get up early to run or ride my bike and I
want to preserve my dark adaptation as long as possible, or if I get up
in the middle of the night and go to the fridge for a bottle of water,
I'll close one eye when I open the fridge. Then once I close the fridge
door, I can still see my way through the eye that was closed, while the
one that was open is temporarily "blinded".=20

The key here is that you said "unaffected". I don't know to what extent
the protected eye was affected, only that it is relatively still dark
adapted. I'll have to think up some way to test this in a measureable
way.
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