[Nightshift]

You can banter all you like with respect to retinal damage, joules and mw's but lets face it, has anyone actually tested it?

Well here goes, I have a 10Mw 532nm Green laser and I live opposite a large hill that has a lookout on it, according to my GPS this lookout is 3000 mtrs from my rear deck and certainly has line of site to it. No houses, roads or airports are near this lookout, green tree frogs can just close their eyes.

As I am convinced that my eyesight will not be harmed by this experiment, I am going to perform a test this weekend, I certainly would not look in to the laser under 10 mtrs, in fact under 50 mtrs, however, I would certainly risk looking at it from 3000 mtrs. I will drive to the lookout with a torch, shine the torch at my house and (via mobile phone) have my wife fire the laser at me (at the torch), I suspect I will see a vaguely annoying green halo around a moderately bright but not blinding green dot.

I will publish my findings here in the next few days.

I for one will not bother with licensing or any such ban, I am a responsible user and the authorities can go jump, our lives are already way to controlled by these morons. An old bumper sticker said "If you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns", they outlawed guns and guess what? People are still being shot. Prohibition has NEVER worked and never will. It is impossible to police and therefore a storm in a teacup IMHO. These are valuable tools, I use mine on my ETX90 to guide my 12" DOB, I highly recommend this method of guiding as a cheap alternative to expensive pushto systems if you already own a goto scope or cube. It has the added benefit of naked eye pointing as well, good when trying to find exactly what your viewing.

Dennis.