What Color is Your Benham's Top?

[BvBPL]

Benham's Top is an optical illusion that creates the illusion of color in a black and white image. The color is different for different people.

What color is your top?

Mine is ecru, but my girlfriend sees blue and yellow.

Spoiler :

Link.

 

[Synobun]

A very light tan colour.

 

[BenitoChavez]

That's an interesting illusion. I see yellow, black, and light grey.

 

[Kennigit]

I see the yellowish tan

while it seems introductory google search does indicate that red/green can be seen, a scientific paper on it just has in the abstract that it is blue-yellow dominated (can't get behind paywall, not going to spend time to look for other stuff. Followed wikipedia here)

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/004269899290074S

so I bet the vast majority will see a shade along that. googling briefly, maybe something like this:

 

[Bootstoots]

A darkish yellow - something like goldenrod.

 

[schlaufuchs]

Which part is supposed to turn a color? I just see black and white flashing.

 

[cybrxkhan]

I'm seeing a kind dark purple in the center, but as Owen said, what part am I supposed to be looking at?

 

[GoodGame]

Link to video.

This was more helpful. I almost saw like a maroon, at very high rotational speed. Mostly I just saw subtle tone differences of black and white.


Overall, I disagree with the claim that color doesn't exist objectively.

 

[Cutlass]

I'm only seeing black, white, and gray.

 

[Hygro]

Yeah I'm just seeing black and white.

 

[SoupJuice]

I see orange/blue radiating stripes at first but within 4-5 seconds it all goes tan... weird

 

[Kyriakos]

Which part is supposed to turn a color? I just see black and white flashing.

Me too. It is a nice pattern, but apart from a very slight and very deep purple momentarily forming out of the black (and likely also because i did not want to just see black/white), i did not observe any color, although with such images it usually stands that one has to look at them for more than 10-15 seconds and sort of dive in a bit.

But i was happy to read that the image is only black/white moving in a pattern. I too noted that there was no direction as to where one should focus his eyes on (for example in another similar optical illusion there was clear direction to stare at a perimeter, or some particular bit of the image as in the center). Surely the illusion is based on where one focuses as well, apart from all other variables having more to do with way of thinking or even sensory state.

 

[Perfection]

GREEN

 

[Narz]

Light-brownish reddish.

Strange to think anyone else could see any other color or no color at all.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Seeing red and blue. Would stay for longer if it wasn't making me so dizzy

 

[Kyriakos]

^You are getting more NU-American, identifying spinning 'black and white' with red and blue

 

[gay_Aleks]

^You are getting more NU-American, identifying spinning 'black and white' with red and blue

Whatever "NU" means in this case, but it all makes sense. Sort of. Then again, perhaps my CRT monitor which is about 9 years old is playing up stuff. Perhaps it's less red and blue, and more like light-brown and purpleish.

 

[Zelig]

Which part is supposed to turn a color? I just see black and white flashing.

Yeah, it looks yellow on my yellowish monitor with f.lux running, but on my properly calibrated monitor it's just black and white.

 

[Kennigit]

Video posted I don't see anything

 

[azzaman333]

GREEN

This.