What are those rays that come out of headlights at night?
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Light hitting particles of dust, moisture, etc. headlights are specialized par lamps that focus on making an extremely concentrated relatively narrow beam
If you see something, it means a photon has entered your eye and been sensed by the cells on the back wall. You’ll note that the direction photons leave your headlights is almost the exact opposite direction needed for it to enter your eyes. The only way your headlights can show you something is for the photons to strike that thing, reflect off, and come backwards to your eyes. Most of the time, the stuff we see are the road, road lines, road signs, and the occasional animal that wanders out. These are large objects that clearly reflect a lot of light so we get an image from all the different photons that bounce off it. There’s a lot of stuff in the way that is very small. It doesn’t reflect a lot of light, and we don’t get an image from the few photons that bounce off it. These things are so small, we may not even realize we are seeing a thing at all.
It seems like the beams of light emanating from are headlights are physical objects we can see. They aren’t. The beams trace the path that the photons make on their way out of the headlights, but essentially what is happening is like in heist movies where they spray powder or fog in the air so they can see the laser beams protecting the jewels. The particles are so small that they don’t actually obscure vision to a meaningful degree, but large enough to interact with a few stray photons and scatter them. Some will end up in our eyes, and we see what looks like a beam of light.
If you mean the rays that come out as a cross (4 rays, up left right down):
Our eyes, as well as cameras, use lens and apertures (holes that change size, pupils in the eyes) to focus on what we want to see. The shape of the aperture causes some side effects to the light. The particular shape of our eyes causes crosses. You may have seen in movie shots that show the glare of the sun, and have hexagon-like glare? That is caused by the shape of the aperture of the camera, too.
If you’re talking about rays to go outward from the lught, you may have an astigmatism and need glasses
I doubt you’re refering to the actual light but rather beams traveling outwards from the light source? If so you might have astigmatism.
Here’s an example what astigmatism looks like https://i.imgur.com/q6fjC8U_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium
I have astigmatism in both of my eyes and I see halos and starbursts on all light sources at night. It’s really bad when it rains and I’m driving because all the little droplets on the windshield do it too
I think what you are referring to is called the Tyndall Effect. It’s fairly common and happens because light scatters and illuminates the dust/smoke particles.
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