the.com/afterimage
proof your eyes keep talking about the light long after it left.
means The visual impression that lingers in your sight after the original stimulus is gone, often as a ghostly or color-reversed shape.
from A transparent English compound of "after" (following, behind) and "image" (a picture or likeness, from Latin "imago," a copy or representation, related to "imitari," to imitate). It joined the language as scientists studied vision and persistence of sight — a plain word naming a strange optical leftover, the eye's stubborn echo of what it just saw.
- cause
- Photoreceptors fatigue and over-report the opposite color
- complementary ghost
- Stare at red, see cyan haunting the wall
- sun warning
- Solar afterimages can mean permanent retinal burns
- flag trick
- Black-orange-green flag flips to red-white-blue
- named
- Called a negative afterimage by vision scientists
for instance
staring at the sun — bright light leaves inverted color image lasting seconds after looking away
troxler's fading — fixed gaze on one point makes peripheral images vanish, rediscovered 1804