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One morning I woke up to a text message and picked up my phone but I was not yet fully awake and my eyes had not really gotten its focus. When I stared at the phone I saw two phones. Which is obviously just a depth perception and missed focus. There is even and art form called stereogram and its fun to play with sometimes , which is what I was doing, because there was some interesting light coming through the window. In the corner of my eye I even caught a glimpse of the visible light band spectrum.

So I was looking at the two phones. One real and the other a recreation of the other, and they were exact copies of each other ( as they should be ). But when I titled my head, a light reflection would pass over the real one but not its doppelganger. However the original light reflection was still showing even though the real phone had tilted showing another reflection.

Does anyone know what this phenomenon this?

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    $\begingroup$ This phenomena is termed as Astigmatism. Try search in google as "what is astigmatism" happy to help you Umarmukthar $\endgroup$ Commented Aug 26, 2013 at 12:08
  • $\begingroup$ That is flipping interesting. However I am looking more for the light phenomenon as opposed to the eye. So what are the light waves/particles doing here. I guess it is really hard to differentiate the two seeing as the light interpretation is based on the eyes. You got me to a new rabbit hole though \o/ $\endgroup$
    – user16022
    Commented Aug 28, 2013 at 10:02

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The two images are equally 'real'. One is produced in each of your eyes, so they are similar, but viewed from slightly different angles. This means that a reflection of a bright light, which requires a precise alignment of light source, eye and reflecting surface, may be visible in one image and not the other.

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  • $\begingroup$ Indeed they are both equally real, but I suspect the OP's sense that one was more real comes from having one eye dominant over the other. The phone viewed by the dominant eye would be mostly opaque, with the other image consisting of a more transparent phone. $\endgroup$
    – user10851
    Commented Aug 25, 2013 at 21:04
  • $\begingroup$ Cool. My one eye is actually worse then the other, It is 16 / 20 , whereas my left eye is 20 /20 vision. Kinda weird , I think it happened after a diving accident where i got a slight bend. $\endgroup$
    – user16022
    Commented Aug 26, 2013 at 10:02
  • $\begingroup$ The Answer seems legit, just wondering if there is an actual name to this phenomenon? $\endgroup$
    – user16022
    Commented Aug 26, 2013 at 10:03
  • $\begingroup$ @gerdi I don't think there is... $\endgroup$
    – Kyle Oman
    Commented Aug 27, 2013 at 15:23

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