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For the coolest experience possible when viewing the total solar eclipse on April 8th, scientists suggest that you make sure everyone around you is wearing red and green.
If everyone is wearing these colors when the eclipse occurs an interesting optical illusion will also take place.
Here’s why.
What happens during a total solar eclipse is that the color reds will appear darker while the color green gets more vibrant, according to IFL Science.
“Vision in the eye happens thanks to receptors called rods and cones,” astrophysicist Dr. Alfredo Carpineti writes. “They are located on the retina and they do very different things. At low light levels, rods are the one that gets active. They do not help with the colors and have low spatial acuity. This is known as the scotopic vision. When there’s a lot of light, it’s the cones that are active, which bring the high spatial acuity and the ability to see colors. This is called photopic vision.
“But there is a third vision when the light levels are in between dark and bright. It is called mesopic vision and both cones and rods are active. If at dawn or dusk, your eyesight seems worse, that is why. So you might start seeing the connection with the eclipse. At totality, the sky darkens very suddenly so your eyes have no time to get used to the usual slow change you experience at dawn or dusk.”
It is what’s known as the Purkinje effect, Purkinje phenomenon or Purkinje shift.
As explained by Tina Hesman Saey of Science News and Takeshi Yoshimatsu, a color vision researcher at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, “An object’s color depends on the light it reflects. Because more red light tends to reach the ground in direct sunlight, sunbathed objects reflect more red light than blue. … During a total solar eclipse, the moon blocks the sun, so most of the light hitting and reflecting off objects on the ground is indirect light. More of that indirect light is easily scattered blue waves, so objects reflect more blue light.”
Three things to keep in mind, however, are that (1) this only works if you are wearing eclipse glasses, so make sure you get the right kind, (2) you won’t be able to photograph this phenomenon so everyone is just going to have to take your word that you saw it, (3) this trick of the eye gets weaker the further away from the path of totality you are.