Have you ever noticed you can actually see cells on your eye surface while looking at, for example, a bright light?

I don't intentionally look at bright lights as I have cataracts and it's too painful to do that. The only thing I've ever noticed are "floaters."

What are those "floaters"?

Those things you see floating across the surface of your eyes from time to time. They are usually just things like dust particles on the eye surface.

Yes, I love it too. Its quite fascinating really. (God I must lead a boring life!)

yes, but they're called "floaters" and they're suspended in the fluid inside your eye, they're not cells. Check Dr Weil's article on them.

I can't see cells, but I do see a moving spot sometimes. The eye doctor told me that those are called "floaters". I forgot the technical term for what it is, but he said that it is a nerve/muscle/something that is connected before you are born and is disconnected shortly after birth. Some people can see it and I happen to be one of them.
It's never bothered me though. I like to play with it when I can see it.

lol
that's not what my doctor said floaters are...I wonder if ND doc's are full of crap.

huh... well it's possible Dr. Weil is full of crap too, although he's usually not very craptastic... I've heard his explanation from others but not other doctors...

I can't remember now where I read it but I remember reading about this somewhere. What I read was that it had something to do with conception.

maybe your doctor was talking about very minor retinal defects... that seems like a reasonable explanation too

The way I understood, it wasn't a defect. Just something left over from being in the womb, like a belly button.

yeah thats what I heard it was something like that.

Um, no.

I know what you're talking about, but if they're cells or not, I don't know. And I don't have to look at bright lights.

Yep

I didn't think they were cells. Is the lense of the eye really capable of magnifying things that much?

I seriously doubt you saw a bacterium on your eyeball.

I am absolutely sure about the bacterium.

The only time I pay attention to what's in or out of my eyes is contacts placement in the morning and removal at night. Oh yeah--I also throw tantrums whenever I get a bit of mascara and it hurts like the Devil has PMS.

I have often wondered what the "shooting stars" are that I see when I over-strain myself or hit my head on something, or bend over and come up too suddenly. They look for all the world like what sperm cells look like under a microscope, wriggling and twisting this way and that for about a second before my vision normalizes again. They all move in random directions, and seem to shoot like shooting stars in slow motion. And when looking into a bright light, I can see an aura in my eye of little granular things that seem to circulate in a toroid pattern.
I assume these things are natural phenomena, not like the piece of flotsam that occasionally swims across my vision, appearing hazily everywhere I look, moving only slightly each time my eye moves.

Great survey question. I always wondered how many other people silently wondered about this, and whether any opthamologists out there could explain it to us.

No, but I've noticed being able to see bacteria on my eyes when I am underwater... maybe some protozoa too.

Nope! Never ahd that happen to me.....yet.

I'm very near-sighted, and when I look at artificial light (such as light bulbs) with my glasses off, I see a kind of "swiss cheese" pattern on the blurry bright spots. Sometimes, this pattern is moving, but it's mostly stable.

I've also noticed that when *really* bright light enters my eyes from the side, I can see my own retina, complete with tiny blood vessels and the blind spot.

Is that what --
Yeah! It just dawned on me, sometimes people have, in their periphery, something that looks like a what I can only think of as being like a meteor shower. Those are dead cells.

I see them when I'm looking down the microscope, but I don't think they're cells. It's usually just dust.

bacteria, and cells in general, are really really small - most bacteria are less than 0.00004 inches long. I'm with Enheduanna, I don't think it's at all likely that any of you are seeing cells or bacteria. I think you're seeing things that you're interpreting as cells or bacteria.

I know. But they're right on the surface of my eye... And I'm very near-sighted... I'm not saying I am able to see bacteria with the naked eye from a distance, for I am not. But in this case there's no distance. And I've seen such a bacillus only once.

Those, my friend, aren't really cells. They are floating solid matter that's in the plasmic centre of your eye - think of it as debris inside a Cadbury Cream Egg... do you Americans have those at Easter time?
anyway, an interesting thing to note is that it is impossible to look at these "floaters" as they are rarely in your line of sight. The one I sometimes see is just to the left of my line of sight, so when I try to look at it, the mofo keeps moving!!

Never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. What drugs are u taking and where can i get some?

Well then you have missed a lot! I was totally sober when I noticed the germ!

Btw, ask your local dealer. We don't ship "skylarks" to foreign locations. Yet.

For real? Cool.

the germ?? rofllf what are u doing looking into bright lights anyway - doing thats enough to send anyone mad...which explains a helluva lot

Hell yeah. You must know better...

I can see those things and, they're nerves.

Not a boring life - just a life where you take the time to appreciate everything around you.

can't think of any witty retort - but if you want to see "germs" in your eyes than i won't criticise - whatever gets u thru life is ok by me

I have seen the cells. I also saw all these veins and actually saw the blood

YEAYEAYEA! I thought i was alone!!!!!!

We do have Cadbury Eggs here

I had never even thought to look before this survey, but now I'm dying to sneak off to a mirror.....

Ever since I was little I have seen the things you refer to. When a small child I called it an 'airplane'. That, of course made no since to anybody. As I have grown and learned I can see now the similarity between what I am looking at and microscopic bacteria. What bothers me is that they seem to be increasing. I can't get a satisfactory answer even from an eye doctor. I've mentioned the phenomenon to a few people, some of whom were medical people. All too often, the responses are silly and dismissive, like a lot of the ones you got when you asked the question initially. I was hoping to find something on the internet today and found this site. I wish the dumb ones who haven't experienced something would just keep their opinions to themselves instead of trying to say it doesn't exist. The one guy told you not to look at bright lights for cryin' out loud! How useful was that? Was that supposed to be witty or something? Jeez...

Last night I couldn't sleep, so there I lay staring at a pinprick of my light without my glasses. To any near-sighted person including myself, a pinprick of light without glasses appears as a blurred halo of light. The halo pulsated, growing smaller and larger as my eyes naturally adjusted their focal point repeatedly back and forth. I thought, "Hey, maybe if I can will my focal point to change enough, the halo of light will eventually converge to a single point and I won't be near-sighted anymore!" But I couldn't do it.

So then I had a better idea. I wondered, "Are there more details inside this 'blurry' halo?" I directed my attention to the details of the "blur," and found that it was not blurry at all. The halo was actually composed of tiny circles. I thought to myself, "This looks uncannily similar to what I would see under a microscope slide in high school biology." I looked more closely at the tiny circles. I blinked. They moved.

Naturally, I was skeptical. Hell, if someone told me they could see cells in their eyes and wrote this note, I wouldn't believe them at all. But gradually, after staring and blinking a lot, I became convinced that these were, indeed, CELLS ON THE TIP OF MY PUPIL. By staring at a fixed light in darkness, I essentially turned my eye into a LIGHT MICROSCOPE, with the slide being the tip of my pupil. I think it only works because I am severely near-sighted.

By the way, these are not "floaters." If you tell me I am seeing floaters I will punch you in the face. I've noticed floaters since I was 5.

You can see cells too! (But only if you're severely near-sighted, like -900 or more). Here are some easy steps!

1. Make sure the room is dark.
2. Take off your glasses.
3. Cover one eye (if you leave both eyes uncovered you will be seeing cells from both eyes at the same time, which would be confusing).
4. Stare at a pinprick of medium-brightness light about 5 feet away (this should appear as a blurry halo).
5. Focus on this light for a minute or so. Try to catch what's going on inside the blur.
6. Close your eye exactly half-way such that your eyelid is covering half of the halo of light. You should now be seeing the bottom semi-circle half of the halo.
7. Open your eyelid all the way. Notice the WATER MARK you left behind on the halo (it should appear as a thick double-membrane line dividing the halo). This should be enough to convince you that what you are seeing is in your eye on the cell level, not in the light.
8. If you're still not convinced, blink a lot. Notice how the cells at the top layer move and slide with the blink, and momentum carries them forward as it should, but they slow down due to a viscosity in the liquid they live in. Also notice that deeper-layered cells remain stationary.

Enjoy, if you're near-sighted.
Max

Yeah I have these. found this thread while looking around google to see if i could find *anything* about it... anyone i'd asked would just dismiss it or just not give a crap. funny how it seems relatively rare and unexplained. surely the eye doesn't have the power or precision to actually magnify cells?! i feel special. we should form a club and hold meetings to discuss it, get tshirts made and go on day trips to the zoo.

Yes i have seen the the things you are talking about. Weather they are cells or not is another question. I know they are not floaters as these are extremely large and are simple pieces of dust or dirt that caught on your eye.

What we are seeing here is something different, hundreds of little (cells?) that are moving around in different patterns seemingly randomly (like Brownian Motion).

I think people here are getting confused between the two things because of the ambiguity of the question. but it would be good to find an answer to what this is. (I have been looking on Google and that's how I got here).

I cant edit my post, but i just wanted to add that i have 20/20 vision and I can see them when looking at a bright light (usually on a sunny day). Although obviously not looking at the sun! Don't do that...

Also if it helps the mystery I am quite sensitive to light, and use blue overlays to help my reading (because of dyslexia). Not sure if this helps, but seems only a few people see this and i would like to know what it is.