A Bird's Eye View (or) You Won't Believe Your Eyes (or) A Sight For Sore Eyes (or) ...

Nytmare · May 14, 2013

It would appear as though, every once in a while, a person goes in for a type of cataract surgery known as Crystalens, and ends up accidentally being able to see into the ultraviolet spectrum.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/118557-the-eyes-have-it-seeing-ultraviolet-exploring-color

Does anyone know where you volunteer for unnecessary cataract surgery?

Dannyalcatraz · May 14, 2013

Probably in the legendary back-street auto/body shops of Chihuahua, Mexico.

Nagol · May 14, 2013

Seeing UV used to be common with the adoption of clear plastic lens replacements in the '70s. It's pretty bad for your retina though so they tinged the lenses yellow to block the UV.

Umbran · May 14, 2013

Nagol said:
It's pretty bad for your retina though...

I daresay. Being outside in UV all day gives you a sunburn on exposed skin. So, imagine what's happening to the back of your eyeball!

so they tinged the lenses yellow to block the UV.

Technically, they tinged the lens to block UV. The result is that it absorbs in the upper spectrum (up around blue), so that what light passes through it appears a bit yellow to us (see the color chart in the article).

Dannyalcatraz · May 14, 2013

Back in the late 1980s, I actually had a pair of dark blue sunglasses that radically changed the way certain things looked, like flowers. In particular, I member a bed of dark red flowers near one building that, through those lenses, looked bright, almost glowing red.

In the light *ahem* of the article, I wonder if they were showing me some UV images...

Umbran · May 14, 2013

The lens of the human eye filters out UV, and simple static lenses do not change the wavelength of incoming light - so they can't downshift UV into some visible area you can see, for example.

Now, that's not to say that those lenses didn't make the flowers look different - but they could only do so be *removing* light, not by adding it or shifting it.

So, for example, you may have seen advertised on TV some amber-colored sunglasses that reduce glare. This is a real phenomenon. Short wavelength light scatters more off the dust in our atmosphere, producing what we call glare. Filter out that short wavelength stuff (the blues and purples), and you can get a sharper image. It is rather like there can be a fuzzy image overlaying that you can remove.

Your blue glasses might have done something like the reverse.

Dannyalcatraz · May 14, 2013

That does make more sense...

I wish I still had those funky things, but they died: the lenses were glass, and not of the high-impact variety. One day, they got knocked off my face and hit stone...

Scott DeWar · May 19, 2013

I just had my second cataract lens replacement surgery. I have not noticed any thing yet, but I have been only looking through one good eye for 4 years, and had cataracts for about 3 to 5 years before that.

maybe I need to pay more attention here......

Scott DeWar · May 27, 2013

I have been thinking on this.

The only way one could see any in the UV band with those lens inserts is if the acrylic insert did not get the uv filtering like it was supposed to,

Kaodi · May 27, 2013

Even if you had some kind of colour-representation of UV light, would it really be "seeing" UV in the traditional sense? The surgery is not changing the visual abilities of the rods and cones, right?