Yet your peripheral vision can detect dimmer stars than your direct vision. Look directly at Orion, or the Pleiades, then look at something nearby—you’ll see stars that ‘weren’t there’ when you looked directly at them. You can make them disappear by looking at them.
In real low light conditions you have to look off to the side of something to see it.
You are the only other person I’ve heard note this. I’ve mentioned it to eye doctors and they listened politely, ignorantly and without curiosity.
I heard an explanation for this once. If I remember correctly, it has to do with the higher concentration of “cones” (color receptors) in your retina’s usual area of focus - the place you use when you really want to pay attention to something. There are more “rods” (black and white receptors) around the other areas of your retina.
We use the rods in low light, because they are better in that situation. Cones can’t process well in low light. SO - when we pay attention to a distant point of light when it’s dark, we try to use the cones, that don’t pick it up. Looking to the side, we can see it...
Here’s the part I don’t remember - we also have a blind spot where the optic nerve funnels out of the back of the eye. This may or may not contribute, I don’t remember.