Please someone! Explain to me why the light of the streetlight shines through the leaves and branches to create “pixelated” square patches of light? No bullshit explanations please. How does this happen?

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[–]Davethe_blank_ 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

light is being broken up on different levels. If you put a bunch of random circles on top of each other, there would be some random squares that would line up.

[–]David_Allen_Cope1 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

We live in a computer simulation.

[–]SneakyBishop 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yep, it's the matrix unable to process that many levels of light shading and so it approximates at 640x480 resolution.

[–]Yin 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

"Pinholes" (gaps in leaves) are showing the same light source (its underlying shape) through every hole/gap.

The shape of the light source (with anything obstructing it) is the shape of what a "pixel" (single gap) is there, in what you're calling pixelated.

Thousands of gaps mean thousands of it are being shown so it looks pixelated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_camera#Natural_pinhole_phenomenon

https://www.reddit.com/r/blackmagicfuckery/comments/pjo2cj/the_way_this_tree_shadow_forms_a_grid_pattern/

https://petapixel.com/2012/05/21/crescent-shaped-projections-through-tree-leaves-during-the-solar-eclipse/

You can test this yourself by taking a light and making a shape in it by obstructing it (like taping a coin in the center of a flashlight to make an "eclipse"), then shining it through something opaque with lots of holes and you'll see the same shape repeating projected. And also there's the factor of how your digital camera captures the light in its sensor arrays if you're talking digital images.

[–]Canbot 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Take a picture of the light. It is most likely the diffuser. But I could see it being an array of LEDs

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's interference. That's what waves do. No surprise. Just the beauty of nature.

[–]SoCo 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This particular thing gets extremely wild during a solar eclipse. Search for some images/videos of it, there are many. I got to see it myself during that one about 5 years ago. The tree leaf shadows were really the neatest part of it.