range of my laser

[BKarim]

by night i can see the dot of my 532nm on trees that are 1000m (3300ft) away.

at which power do you rate it ? near 10mW like advertised or more ?

 

[udanis]

That could be any power >3mw really. A well focused laser that was 10mw could shine a lot further.

 

[drummerdimitri]

by night i can see the dot of my 532nm on trees that are 1000m (3300ft) away.

at which power do you rate it ? near 10mW like advertised or more ?

That would be kinda hard to tell because you can sacrifice divergence for power and vice versa. Assuming your laser has a divergence of 1.5 mrad, anything greater or equal to around 5 mW should be visible as you have described. In other words, it would be impossible to tell unless you have more specs and some pics...

 

[BKarim]

ok thanks

 

[qumefox]

That would be kinda hard to tell because you can sacrifice divergence for power and vice versa. Assuming your laser has a divergence of 1.5 mrad, anything greater or equal to around 5 mW should be visible as you have described. In other words, it would be impossible to tell unless you have more specs and some pics...

Incorrect. Power and divergence have nothing to do with each other. You can have low power at high divergence as easily as you can have high power at low divergence.

Divergence is tied to beam diameter, not power.

And it's impossible to tell what power your laser is at all. The only real way to find out, is to measure it with an LPM. Any other method is just a guess.

 

[drummerdimitri]

Incorrect. Power and divergence have nothing to do with each other. You can have low power at high divergence as easily as you can have high power at low divergence.

Divergence is tied to beam diameter, not power.

And it's impossible to tell what power your laser is at all. The only real way to find out, is to measure it with an LPM. Any other method is just a guess.

I know that, but that's not what I was trying to say. I meant that a high powered laser with high divergence will look as bright as a low powered laser with low divergence. Sorry if I didnt make myself clear...

Correct, you'll need an infinitely large beam diameter to have zero divergence.

 

[extremeodd]

Distance is a hard one, I had a 5mw greenie that you could see where it hit in the clouds. Its all divergence.