Retinal Images

This section illustrates with figures :

• a/ how a point on a tangent screen projects onto the retina (figures 1 and 2)
• b/ how a segment lying on a tangent screen projects onto the retina (figure 3).

Figure 1: Geometry of retinal image formation is illustrated with a static figure of a very simplistic eye (blue sphere). The AB segment is moving on a Tangent screen while the images of A and B are projected onto the retina. Note that the actual nodal point of an eye is more anterior than the sphere's center of rotation used here as a proxy of the fused nodal point..	Figure 2: Horizontal rotation of Figure 1 to help you build a mental representaton of the 3D structure.

Figure 3: Animation to show how the angular size of the retinal image of AB segment varies as a function of the horizontal euclidean distance between S0 (tangent Screen Origin) and AB segment.

Pointers

Atchison, D. A., & Smith, G. (2000). Optics of the Human Eye. Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-7506-3775-6.X5001-9 - see notably the section "Image formation : the focused paraxial image".