In ocular physiology, adaptation is the ability of the
eye to adjust to various levels of darkness and light.The human eye can function from very dark to very bright levels of light - its sensing capabilities reach across nine
orders of magnitude. This means that the brightest and the darkest light signal that the eye can sense are a factor of roughly one
thousand million apart. However, in any given moment of time, the eye can only sense a
contrast ratio of one thousand. What enables the wider reach is that the eye adapts its definition of what is black. The light level that is interpreted as "black" can be shifted across six orders of magnitude - a factor of one million.
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