this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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Science Memes

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My time has come!

The above stereographic image is for cross-eyed viewing (most stereograms are wall-eyed, so you may need to put your finger in front of your screen until this one comes into focus)

This is an image of Honolulu, Hawaii, published by NASA. Note Diamond Head (the volcanic crater) in the south.

Here are some other stereopairs published by JPL:


Wheeler Ridge, California


Mount Saint Helens


Salt Lake Valley, Utah


Wellington, New Zealand

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[–] multifariace@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

I miss r/crossview and the short love r/crossviewnsfw. Damn greed ruining everything good in the world.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

In feudal Japon, 19th century, a photographer made a lot of photos from the people in 3D to use in a viewer, hand colored.

(Converted to gif, to see the 3D effect without eye acrobatics)

[–] Shelbyeileen@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I have one of these stereoscopes! It came with a bunch of nature scenes, but a few slides had 1800s 3D porn too!

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

Porn exist since photography and also before, even in 3D, only technology has improved

[–] Zacryon@feddit.org 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

How to make people on the internet staring at their phones like this:

Worked well for me. Cool stuff!

[–] Siegfried@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well, its the first time that i manage to see one of these magic eye images.... but I need to ask. Most of this seem to be inverted (i see mountains as sinks, lakes and rivers are higher than peaks). Is this intended? I'm interpretint it wrong?

[–] porl@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

These ones require crossing your eyes, whereas the other type you relax them (like looking further away).

I find the other type way easier and struggle with cross eye ones. For these images you could swap the left and right portions to get it working the other way.

[–] wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 1 points 22 hours ago

Actually, I made a version for wall-eyed viewing in one of the other top-level comments.

[–] Naz@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

Dude, these are dope! Thank you!

Wow! Super depth!

[–] wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 32 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (12 children)

Since some people are apparently rather salty about these being cross-eyed, despite the fact that that's just how NASA made them, here, special for y'all, a selection:

[–] AdmiralRob@lemmy.zip 4 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Thank you so much! This is so much easier for me.

I wasn't going to complain or anything, but this post made me realize that I'm actually incapable of viewing cross-eyed. It actually hurt my eye sockets to try.

[–] wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 2 points 22 hours ago

I also personally prefer wall-eyed viewing, but these just happened to be cross-eyed originally, so I was surprised by the complaints.

[–] JayDee@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

These ones are... different. When I use these ones the mountain ridges appear to dip inwards? Away from the screen. This was not the case for the ones in the main post

EDIT: I figured out the reason: i'm still going cross-eyed to view them. In the cross-eyed ones, you are taking the left image in the right eye and the right image in the left eye, but in the wall-eyed one you are supposed to take them in reverse. So if you look at the wall-eyed one cross-eyed, the depths are going to all be reversed for you.

EDIT 2: to get the wall-eyed ones to work correctly, I had get a piece of mail and physically seperate my eyes from one another with it. The sensation of going wall-eyed was exactly the same as crossing my eyes, but the results were now correct.

[–] Persi@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 day ago

Thank you, they look amazing

[–] MisterNeon@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

These are rad. Excellent post.

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[–] orgrinrt@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Really can’t seem to understand how this works.

Never did any “magic eyes” or whatever books as a kid, so maybe I just don’t have any practice in this, but whether I try to cross my eyes focusing beyond the screen, or “above” the screen, I can’t get the resulting middle image to look like anything other than a blur.

Perhaps my eyes are somehow odd on the other hand. I don’t need glasses though, so I’m a bit skeptical that’s it.

I tried all the guides I found in this thread, including the floating hot dogs, attempting varying distances both with the screen and the finger, then trying the wall-eyed variants too for all of them, none of them work for me.

So odd. It seems it should work. No idea what I am doing wrong here.

Or is this the joke? To get people to squint for minutes on end on their screen?

[–] Zink@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago

I used to be able to do them at will, and even overlap images an additional time to get a crazy second level of shape.

But now I can’t, thanks to the american health insurance industry. yay!

I promise this isn't a troll. In your case, it may be that your eyes are having difficulty focusing on nonexistent objects. If they're blurry, it's not that your eyes aren't crossing, but rather that they are out-of-focus. Eyes naturally focus the lenses to bring near or distant objects into clarity, but when I was first doing magic eye images a long time ago, it also took me a while to convince my eyes that they needed to focus on the images.

My guess is that, since the actual images are on the screen at distance A, but your eyes are crossing as if they're looking at distance B, your eyes are auto-focusing for objects at B, but the images are still actually at A, so they appear out-of-focus.

[–] jaupsinluggies@feddit.uk 2 points 1 day ago

They do work. It takes some practice to get them though. At first I used a pencil or something to focus on while I made the two dots merge together, stayed focussed on the pencil until my brain "saw" the image behind it, then it sort of locked in and I could take the pencil away. I've done so many of them now that I can just go crosseyed to bring the dots together, then look at the middle picture.

The 3D image works by tricking your brain into seeing a third image that isn't really there. We're used to constructing 3D images from two slightly different views; we do it all the time, so the two images are slightly different and when overlaid use the same mechanism to make you think it's 3D.

[–] HereIAm@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I was gonna tell you it was a meme and they don't actually work. This being in science meme I thought they might actually be stereographic images, but it's from so far away you wouldn't be able to discern any 3D-ness. But I was wrong the height is exaggerated. For me the walleyed version worked for me, I just had to zoom in on one image and hold my phone quite far away.

[–] EvilBit@lemmy.world 66 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

About 21 years ago (😩) I made a stereoscopic photo for some online contest. I was pretty proud of it.

Edit: please ignore the fact that the light doesn’t match between the shots!

[–] wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 20 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] EvilBit@lemmy.world 22 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Thanks! It was a pain to set up the little screen trick but for what it’s worth, I won the contest!

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[–] Lojcs@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago

It is a good one. Although my eyes kept trying to focus on the keyboad and failing

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[–] CromulantCrow@lemmy.zip 36 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Why do all of these look inverted to me? Like, what should be a mountain is a deep hole in the ground.

[–] dangrousperson@feddit.org 24 points 2 days ago (5 children)

These are cross-view, your probably using the focus at infinity trick instead.

[–] Lojcs@piefed.social 3 points 1 day ago

Wow I had no idea it could be done that way. Just tried doing it and the image is way blurrier when 'inverted'. I am near sighted. Does this mean it applies to illusions too?

[–] u_u@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 2 days ago

Wow, I had the same problem as the one you replied to and I thought you were making a joke I didn't get but I stand corrected. You were absolutely 100% right.

Turns out I was focusing at infinity, didn't even realize it was a different thing than crossing my eyes until I tried to cross my eyes first before focusing on the pictures...

Very cool, thanks.

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[–] lmuel@sopuli.xyz 21 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Not sure why but those NEVER work for me lol

Not this, not magic eye books, absolutely nothing works.

Tried for many hours back in the day

[–] AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 12 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I can only do parallel-view, not crosseyed, those look so surreal that way (inverted height/depth basically)

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[–] DarkFuture@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

This is a great way to teach people how to do the Magic Eye puzzles. It's the same method but was notably easier to do this than a Magic Eye.

[–] Psythik@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

This is actually the opposite method you're supposed to use. If you cross your eyes to see a Magic Eye photo, the image will be inverted/inside out.

To view a Magic Eye, you're supposed to look through the image. Personally I was never able to pull it off. These cross-eyed images are a lot easier.

[–] Shelbyeileen@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

I was wondering why it seemed inverted to me. I saw crevasses instead of mountains, but it didn't make sense

[–] waitaminute@midwest.social 2 points 1 day ago

Because of your comment I was finally able to do the magic eye!!!!! I can flip back and forth between them and invert the mountains. Thank you!!!

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[–] over_clox@lemmy.world 25 points 2 days ago (7 children)

Boo, these are cross-view, not parallel-view.

[–] ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 2 days ago (6 children)

I can still view these, but it’s much much harder for me.

I don’t know why parallel isn’t the default.

[–] Maestro@fedia.io 13 points 2 days ago (6 children)

It varies per person. I for one can't view wall-eyed, only cross-eyed.

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[–] ter_maxima@jlai.lu 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (12 children)

These are all backwards. The eyes are reversed so everything that's supposed to be a hole looks like a bump and vice-versa.

EDIT : TIL about cross v wall eyed. I dont understand why they would do it this way though ? The image is much less stable, and moving it at all completely breaks the effect. Wall-eyed really allows you to move and observe details without breaking.

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[–] SayJess@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 2 days ago

!crossview@lemmy.world

It’s not very active, but still has good content.

[–] kernelle@0d.gs 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I love these so much thanks! On YouTube there's also a ton in video format, like this one by Brian May.

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[–] hawgietonight@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago (9 children)

For some reason I'm getting the depth inverted. Mt. Saint Helens looks like a hole in the ground.

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