this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2025
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My understanding is that it’s just a limitation of the physical medium of a glass (or plastic) lens. There’s just only so much it can do - and only so many directions a lens can bend light at the same time before it enters your eye.
I have no complaints, despite the persistent starburst around lights at night. It’s not that big a deal. And I’ve never seen them any other way, after all.
My only other quibble is that my prescription makes everything look a little bit wider than it actually is. Either that, or my astigmatisms (one in each eye, and different from each other too!) make everything look more narrow than it really is? I’ve never really been sure….
Oh yeah. The starburst patterns absolutely are an unavoidable artifact of the axis correction in the lens. They are the result of diffraction doing Fourier optics on point light sources through an anisotropic (non-directionally symmetric) lens system.
As an example, here's the James Webb Space Telescope, which has a hexagonal starburst pattern because its primary mirror is composed of hexagons (I believe the smaller horizontal spike is from the secondary mirror support strut):
We just need to fix out football shaped eyes instead of trying to correct it.