Actually, I would guess that the 'noise' you see is from the highly noisy system of retinal ganglia and such... the eye is a wonderful thing but it has a few, s

Actually, I would guess that the 'noise' you see is from the highly noisy system of retinal ganglia and such... the eye is a wonderful thing but it has a few, shall we say, quirks. Check out this diagram: http://www.corpshumain.ca/en/images/Retine_couches_couleur_(FF)_en.jpg http://www.corpshumain.ca/en/images/Retine_couches_couleur_(... Note that the light comes from the TOP and passes through all those layers before hitting the photosensitive one! So - at the Earth's surface, even on a very dark night, I think you would be receiving far, far too many photons for them to each register as a sort of noise blob. More likely it is the natural noise of your nervous system as it does all the things that cells need to do and produces the slight visible side effect that's more pronounced in darkness and low contrast. Edit: Also, since I remember this coming up in my neuro classes, this has been shown in less rigorous experimentation before: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Quantum/see_a_photon.html http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Quantum/see_a_photon.h...