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The headline could just as well read "Researches find new way to make a coherent beam 250x less powerful than a laser" I guess the breakthrough here is in the fact that you can't make a 1 microwatt laser. The "using less power" part of the headline was a poor wording choice that makes most...

Divergence is a function of beam quality and size. So if the divergence of the raw diode output is small, and then you collimate with a short focal length lens, the resulting beam will be narrow and can still have high divergence despite being of high quality. Beam expanders hurt quality, but...

Thanks for posting those photos - Cool to see. Because the refractive index difference of water, surface coatings will all misbehave, and thus optical components will behave differently than expected - reflecting when expected to pass etc.

They were testing a laser communications system and happened to take some images at the same time. The primary light source reflecting off the ISS to make it visible is still the Sun by far, but there is was a slight green tint visible due to the laser.

The ESA took some video from the ground of the ISS as they illuminated it with a 3.6W 532nm laser a week ago. Pretty cool stuff and an amazing video. They must have used some mighty fine adaptive optics to get images like that which would normally be impossible due to seeing limitations. Or it...

I called Chuck Norris in to click on it for me just to be safe. He clicked it. Twice. And it gave Lingmoofe a virus.

I can't tell where the wire wrapped most of it's length with purple tape is connected, so I'm not sure exactly what you are doing to check phase of output. You should have the primaries in parallel just as if they were each plugged into separate outlets. Then you could try bringing one end of...

Sure. That will mostly depend on the incident irradiance, the divergence angle, and the reflective properties of the surface+coating. Likely, the coating is designed to be highly absorbent, so only a small fraction of the incident beam would be reflected (and diffusely at that), but given a...

My idea when I was a kid involved using a battery to dissociate water. Then use a fuel cell or combustion device to produce power (obviously this doesn't produce enough power to completely recharge the battery, but my genius has not yet been accounted for). However, the key to getting some...

Sometimes 1 letter makes a difference after all eh? I agree that you are unlikely to have thermal issues. The physical size of the module is such that there will be plenty of surface area to dissipate the heat unless you plan to encapsulate it in something with extremely low conductivity.

Here you go bud. Google

I'm guessing you meant 400mW? Best place to get started would be to use the search function for 650nm and browse through to find threads about similar power levels to what you are looking to build.

I put each one into a pair of socks in my top dresser drawer. Can't get much more "budget" than that.

No need to get testy. I'm not picking on you or attacking your background - thus my "no offense" comment. You asked for help understanding something. Your explanation of your background suggested that you would be familiar with certain concepts, yet your questions suggested maybe a refresher...

No offense Ageless, but you don't exactly sound like an electronics engineer. I've never heard someone familiar with how electricity works refer to something drawing or pulling a voltage. Usually we refer to it as "dropping" voltage. This is simply the potential difference between two points...

Just out of curiosity, why do you care what the output of your laser is? Does it do what you want it to do? A power measurement is pretty meaningless for just about every common use of a laser pointer and is really only helpful as maybe a diagnostic or analysis tool when making...

Why don't you use IR if this is for a security system? No visible halo or dot in that case.

Welcome to the forums. I hope you are able to learn something new and expand your interests in the hobby.

The highest quality single mode beam will still be limited in performance due to diffraction. Thus you will always have divergence in your beam despite any combination of expensive optics you may use. A larger diameter beam can have lower divergence than a small one (all else being equal) so...

Are you saying you would hesitate to buy a laser from me if I advertised that way?