Visiblity help!

[Radim]

I have never even heard of anyone who can see the IR from a remote transmitter. It is very low in power and not at all collimated. I have to use a card to see it myself. All of them are LED based and modulated digitally to be used by the remote receiver.

So, now you have. I can see it clearly.
In general just consider IR as continuing part of red part of spectre. The interesting is that camera captures it as about white. I think it is because camera is not designed for that, however it captures it as quite high intensity light. And yes IR remote is in general not laser and a low power. But it is sufficent to be seen.

 

[paul1598419]

I wonder if this is because of very near IR being used today in remotes. Back in the late 1970s the power was very low and the IR was farther out than, say, 780nm. There wasn't a reason for speculation on this point as no one ever claimed to be able to see it out right. Digital cameras were not available at the consumer level and I knew many engineers and technicians, none of whom ever claimed to be able to see remote transmitter IR. I can clearly see the IR from laser diodes, but that is a different animal. Meh. It's not worth the effort to look into this any longer.

 

[Radim]

Not sure what wavelengths were used in past. But it will be probably 780 nm and 808 nm, what I can see, not tried longer yet. I've just tried IR port from my mobile phone again - really I can clearly recognize even diode shape and see the reflections IR in its housing in the dark. But it is visible also during day.

 

[hwang21]

Side note- I have seen 1064nm before, as have several others, and supported by a paper somewhere on the Internet. Basically, in total darkness, yes it's possible to see even 1064nm. Under anywhere close to normal circumstances, will you see 808nm? Probably not. I used to have a 500mW 808nm WL, you can see a dim reddish spot. Cut that by a factor of 100, you would have to try pretty hard to see it. Don't forget, messing with IR light can hurt your eyes without you even noticing, so take extra caution around these guys

 

[NightExplorer96]

Side note- I have seen 1064nm before, as have several others, and supported by a paper somewhere on the Internet. Basically, in total darkness, yes it's possible to see even 1064nm. Under anywhere close to normal circumstances, will you see 808nm? Probably not. I used to have a 500mW 808nm WL, you can see a dim reddish spot. Cut that by a factor of 100, you would have to try pretty hard to see it. Don't forget, messing with IR light can hurt your eyes without you even noticing, so take extra caution around these guys

Neat! The next wavelength after 1064nm would be 1085nm DPSS according to the CNI website. Im guessing that would be invisible? I mean we're already way past the visible spectrum by this point. I don't know how anyone could see this far into the IR range.

-Alex

 

[Atomicrox]

Side note- I have seen 1064nm before, as have several others, and supported by a paper somewhere on the Internet. Basically, in total darkness, yes it's possible to see even 1064nm. Under anywhere close to normal circumstances, will you see 808nm? Probably not. I used to have a 500mW 808nm WL, you can see a dim reddish spot. Cut that by a factor of 100, you would have to try pretty hard to see it. Don't forget, messing with IR light can hurt your eyes without you even noticing, so take extra caution around these guys

What did 1064nm look like?

 

[hwang21]

Super dim, faint reddish pink ish color. Hard to describe, it's like taking a magenta watercolor and diluting it. 808nm looks like a super dim version of 660-670nm with enough power, at lower powers it sometimes looks more like the pinkish red color, but I still usually see it as a "ruby version" of 660-670nm

There's actually a paper out there describing the eye's ability to distinguish an individual photon :wtf: of course, that wasn't using IR, that was 556nm, to give the eyes a chance, but yea

 

[Atomicrox]

Must vary a lot between people, I see 808nm as a brownish sort of dull red.