[easygenes]

As any skilled visual astronomy observer will tell you… you can train your eyes. Part of this is acknowledging that your night vision is best off-center and learning to foveate in a way which takes advantage of that, but a degree of it is also in just patient noticing. Skilled observers will pick up details in the sky people decades younger than them would miss, with the same view.

[bregma]

Foveate. That's a new verb to me. From the context I take it to mean to direct the subject of one's visual attention to something else other than what one is consciously trying too. I guess it's like ethmoidating a perfume, or palatatating the mouthfeel of a fine wine, or phalangating rough textures.

Glad to see the language is still alive.

[sandworm101]

That difference between center and peripheral vision isn't a defect. It has served us well for thousands of years. Center vision is for hunting, for tracking a target you want to chase/kill. Off-center vision is for noticing stuff in the bushes trying to kill you. So off-center vision is better at night and for detecting movement. That kept us away from the lions. Our acute center vision is tuned for daylight. It helped kill those lions when it was our turn to hide in the bushes.

[DaftDank]

I've noticed I can see the Milky Way best when I observe off-center. As soon as I try to focus directly on it, it's not as clear. Bortle sky 4 probably, SQM about 21

[dotancohen]

The best way to show this to non-observers is to show them the Pleiades. Most people can clearly identify a blobby cloud, but it disappears for them when they look right at it. You have to really look at it for a minute or two for the eye to pick up on it when focusing on it.