Comment by rmmh on An Outside View on Less Wrong's Advice · 2011-07-04T15:00:36.909Z · LW · GW

I take it you haven't spent much time star gazing?

The "foveal blind spot" is how the fovea has a very high density of cones, which gives great acuity with color vision, but unfortunately almost no rods, so very poor performance under low-light conditions.

To view faint stars, you look slightly off to the side while still concentrating on the object. This is called averted vision.