The "Scintillating Starburst" is a type of visual illusion created by Recursia's principal artist, Michael Karlovich. It is the basis for Recursia's logo. Scintillating rays were scientifically investigated through a collaboration between Recursia and Pascal Wallisch Ph.D. of the New York University Center For Neural Science. Click here to read the peer-reviewed article detailing this illusion. In the article, they introduce and explore Scintillating Starbursts, a stimulus type made up of scaled pairs of concentric star polygons that induce illusory scintillating rays or beams.. Click here for a blog post Michael and Pascal wrote on the illusion -- in the blog post they address points not found in their article and further elaborate on what makes scintillating rays unique. Found below are examples of designs where we evoke scintillating rays without following the traditional design scheme found in Scintillating Starbursts. The last image on the page contains two illusions in order to demonstrate the difference between a scintillating ray and the superficially similar phantom band illusion and moiré patterns

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