When I first saw those, I immediately figured that they were the “stars” people see when they get knocked about. Not like in cartoons wwhere you hear a tweet tweet and a circle of five-pointed stars revolves around your head - but tiny moving points of bright white that look like the stars in the sky.
Maybe I need new glasses :eek: :smack:
You were only like 5 feet away. Damn? How did I miss that. Must of been the cuteness.
I saw so many people posting replies to this question that had no idea what they were talking about that I had to create an account on here just to set the record straight. Yes, a direct light source on someone’s eyelid who is that nearsighted will produce a silhouette of the blood vessels and, in fact, will show a very clear picture of the blood cells going through even capillaries. This phenomenon can be experienced by people with normal eyesight as well by having sunlight exposed straight on to the closed eye in the morning before waking up. The lens is in a perfectly relaxed state when the person becomes conscious and if they don’t move and just lay there for a moment while the sun shines on them (we’ve all laid there in a lucid state during those first few minutes of waking up) you can see the red blood cells coursing through your capillaries, one cell at a time. So to the people who thought this guy gave a retardedly poor description of a floater and thought he was an idiot, consider that you indeed are merely mortal and that it is possible that some people you encounter online have knowledge you do not yourself posses. And, to the people who think that this phenomenon described is actually seeing the blood vessels on your retina, you are wrong. The “seeing stars” theory does involve blood flow and blood pressure inside the retina’s capillaries, but these two phenomena are unrelated apart from them taking place around the eye and involving blood flow.
Welcome to the board. Who the hell are you talking to?
And also realized that whoever you are talking to, they posted to this thread approximately 8 years ago.
AHA! I am VINDICATED! Wahooo!
Yeah, even if it is eight years later – I’ll take my victories where I can find them. Besides, revenge is a dish best served cold and all that. 
I’ve seen this too and came to the conclusion that it must be capillaries. A bright light won’t work for me though, it needs to be the sky. Apparently they absorb blue light well.
You can see some interesting effects involving retinal blood flow, though:
While we are here, it is worth mentioning that the “stars” people see after a blow to the head (not what the OP was talking about, but several people brought them up) are a quite different phenomenon, and have nothing much to do with blood, in the retina or elsewhere. They are phosphenes, caused by mechanical stimulation of the optic nerve (or, possibly, visual areas of the brain, if it is a really bad blow).