Hi all!
I am from Belgium, Europe.
I am new here, but not new to lasers. I've built myself a 200mW red with aixiz components and before that I modded a 5mW DPSS greenie to about 30mW. Both work fine, but my question goes about a Blu Ray.
I am not about burning things. Me and some friends are into astronomy and we use 5mW greenies for aiming our telescopes. Our beams must not be too strong as otherwise it influences the dark adaptation of our eyes. A barely visible 5mW green beam is just fine. I use my 30mW green only for showing targets in the sky to larger groups. The problem we experience is that our greenies die at freezing temperatures. Bottom line : when it's to cold, we can't aim our telescopes...
We know it happens because the DPSS train shrinks out of allignating due cold.
My 200mW has no problems with cold since it is a direct pumped single unit laser, and I could build us all 200mW reds, but we don't feel very comfortable to the idea of using 200mW lasers where several people gather, including kids sometimes. it's like waiting for an accident to happen.
We could electronically heat our greenies, but it's like too much of a hassle to us : it involves extra cabling, batteries, a regulation systen, whatever more. We like to keep it as simple as possible. We 've got plenty of other materials to handle in the dark... Guess you understand.
Since a while I 've been thinking about the possibilities of a blu ray single unit laser for astronomy use, but I've never seen a blu ray beam. What mW of bluray would be about equally bright as a 5mW green to the naked eye in open air at night?
As to what I've read, I know the 150mW bluray beam is visible, but again, 150mW is far to much for us.
I was thinking about 20-25mW. The beam doesn't need to be bright. Barely visible is just fine. What is more important is that it doesn't die from cold.
Any experience?
I am from Belgium, Europe.
I am new here, but not new to lasers. I've built myself a 200mW red with aixiz components and before that I modded a 5mW DPSS greenie to about 30mW. Both work fine, but my question goes about a Blu Ray.
I am not about burning things. Me and some friends are into astronomy and we use 5mW greenies for aiming our telescopes. Our beams must not be too strong as otherwise it influences the dark adaptation of our eyes. A barely visible 5mW green beam is just fine. I use my 30mW green only for showing targets in the sky to larger groups. The problem we experience is that our greenies die at freezing temperatures. Bottom line : when it's to cold, we can't aim our telescopes...
We know it happens because the DPSS train shrinks out of allignating due cold.
My 200mW has no problems with cold since it is a direct pumped single unit laser, and I could build us all 200mW reds, but we don't feel very comfortable to the idea of using 200mW lasers where several people gather, including kids sometimes. it's like waiting for an accident to happen.
We could electronically heat our greenies, but it's like too much of a hassle to us : it involves extra cabling, batteries, a regulation systen, whatever more. We like to keep it as simple as possible. We 've got plenty of other materials to handle in the dark... Guess you understand.
Since a while I 've been thinking about the possibilities of a blu ray single unit laser for astronomy use, but I've never seen a blu ray beam. What mW of bluray would be about equally bright as a 5mW green to the naked eye in open air at night?
As to what I've read, I know the 150mW bluray beam is visible, but again, 150mW is far to much for us.
I was thinking about 20-25mW. The beam doesn't need to be bright. Barely visible is just fine. What is more important is that it doesn't die from cold.
Any experience?
