For clarification, the lines are caused by the mirrors’ edges, and the cross hatch pattern common on street lamps in pictures comes from a filter (or scratched lenses/other filters.)
With your normal eyeballs, it comes from defects like cataracts.
You don’t need defects in your eyes to see it. All you need to do is to close your eyes slightly and look through your eyelashes. The light refracts on the lashes and creates a star-like pattern.
Seems a bit weird that every culture would call them some variant of “stars” since they don’t look like actual stars. Actual stars are just dots.
They particularly look like diffraction spikes/starbursts.
Astigmatism, cataracts, glaucoma or smudged glasses can cause you to see starbursts when you look at bright lights at night.
For clarification, the lines are caused by the mirrors’ edges, and the cross hatch pattern common on street lamps in pictures comes from a filter (or scratched lenses/other filters.)
With your normal eyeballs, it comes from defects like cataracts.
You don’t need defects in your eyes to see it. All you need to do is to close your eyes slightly and look through your eyelashes. The light refracts on the lashes and creates a star-like pattern.