Taken with a novel true-color confocal scanner (with white and near IR light, with reduced red). The blood vessels fan out from the optic nerve connection point, just to the right of center, and this is my blind spot.
Notice how the vasculature routes around the center of the retina, feeding it from the periphery, but not blocking the central view. That special spot in the middle is my macula, just 5.5mm across and responsible for the central, high-resolution, color vision that is possible in good light. The fovea is located near the center of the macula. It is a small pit that contains the largest concentration of cone cells. The yellowish pigment is a natural UV sunblock.
It is amazing to me that the vision system of our brain integrates a diversity of three types of cones, and rods to what we perceive as one uniform field of view, but we have blind spots filled-in and poor-color, low res vision outside of the central view.
The darkish areas are low in pigment (I have green eyes).
The bright white line across the center is retinal pigment cell layer. The vitreous of the eyeball is at the top, and the nerve fiber layer runs along the top of the retina.
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