For example a dim light coming from underneath a door – I can see there’s light when I look to the side of the door, but when I look at the gap at the bottom of the door it seems to be pitch black
In: Biology
The centre of the retina of your eye has light receptors called cone cells that are good for colour and fine detail but aren’t as sensitive as the rod cells away from the centre.
Your peripheral vision is better at detecting contrast, and also works much better in low light.
The specific reason is that you have two types of light sensitive cells in your eye, cones and rods (named for their shape). Cones sense color and are processed by the brain to enhance detail. Rods don’t detect color, but are more sensitive and so work better in low light, and are processed by the brain to detect changes in contrast and motion.
The cones are more dense in the center of your vision, and you don’t even have any rods there at all, which is just a part of people being adapted to operating in daylight. As you move toward your peripheral vision the number of rods to cones increases in ratio.
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