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Re: Thanks!
Posted By: Howard, on host 209.86.38.50
Date: Tuesday, October 3, 2000, at 08:47:07
In Reply To: Re: Thanks! posted by Brunnen-G on Monday, October 2, 2000, at 19:19:54:

>
> In my case, as I've said once before, "29" is being in a position to use a $30,000 infra-red thermal imaging night vision scope on the Coastguard boat. Making excuses that we need to practise with all the search equipment, when the real reason is because it's so darn cool, brings it down to about "16". And using it to pretend to be The Predator stalking all the little thermal-imaged people totally hits "12".
>
> Brunnen-"or possibly even lower..."G

I remember back in the 50's when I was working for my uncle (Uncle Sam), we went out one night and used a thing called a "sniper scope." It had a big infrared light on a rifle and a scope that converted infrared to green. Without the scope, you couldn't see any light at all, but when you looked through it there was a big, bright, green spot out there. We fired a few rounds at some white wooden stakes(they looked green) that were driven in the ground. Then it started to rain and we went back to the barracks. As boring as it sounds, it was one of my more pleasent memories of my time in the Army.

On the long shot that there is some one out there who doesn't understand light -- a brief science lesson:
Infrared light(heat wave) is a just slightly longer wavelength than we can see with the unaided eye. It is right next to red light on the spectrum. Green has a shorter wavelength that is the middle of the wavelengths that we can see. Anything shorter than violet is ultraviolet and we can't see that either. If you have an ultraviolet light that you can see, it's because some of it's wavelengths spill over into violet which is visible.
Howard