Something I Noticed
Jun. 29th, 2012 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leftbaseAnybody here know anything about optical stuff? I hope my description of this phenomenon makes some kind of sense.
We have a pair of binoculars that I pretty much only use to look at birds in our back yard. They're probably two or three years old, and it took me that long to notice this. Objects appear to be slightly elongated from top to bottom. Like, they're taller and narrower when observed through the lenses. That in itself is not what I'm wondering about, however.
I wasn't sure about it at first, so I looked around for something to focus on and settled upon two octagon-shaped windows on a neighbor's garage. Yes, the two sides on the sides, that is the ones oriented straight up and down, appear longer than the the other six. Without the binoculars, all eight sides appear identical in length.
The weird thing is, if I lean ninety degrees and look at them sideways, I'd expect then that the two sides parallel with the ground, now effectively top-to-bottom, would look longer. But they don't. It's still the sides that point to the ground and the sky that do.
Why is that?
...
We have a pair of binoculars that I pretty much only use to look at birds in our back yard. They're probably two or three years old, and it took me that long to notice this. Objects appear to be slightly elongated from top to bottom. Like, they're taller and narrower when observed through the lenses. That in itself is not what I'm wondering about, however.
I wasn't sure about it at first, so I looked around for something to focus on and settled upon two octagon-shaped windows on a neighbor's garage. Yes, the two sides on the sides, that is the ones oriented straight up and down, appear longer than the the other six. Without the binoculars, all eight sides appear identical in length.
The weird thing is, if I lean ninety degrees and look at them sideways, I'd expect then that the two sides parallel with the ground, now effectively top-to-bottom, would look longer. But they don't. It's still the sides that point to the ground and the sky that do.
Why is that?
...
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no subject
Date: 2012-06-30 03:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-01 03:48 am (UTC)I just can't figure out why the distortion doesn't rotate when my eyes and the binoculars do.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-30 11:57 am (UTC)*blink*
Astigmatism?
I've seen lenses that have
"anastigmatic" printed around the edge,
so maybe these are NOT anastigmatic?
no subject
Date: 2012-07-01 03:52 am (UTC)I'm determined to figure this out!
no subject
Date: 2012-07-01 10:13 am (UTC)but when you're in the bathtub,
your legs look shorter.
That distortion only occurs in one direction/dimension.
Although, ummm...
did I have a point there?
*blink*