Mike writes “While LED circuits are pretty simple by Make standards, they are essential to amateur astronomers. This is because red light affects the human eye less than other colors, allowing astronomers to see their gear without destroying their night vision. This article shows how easy it is to create red LED light sources and give some examples of how to use them, including map readers, flash lights and interior lights for an eyepiece case.” Link.
4 thoughts on “Making Red Lights for Astronomical Observing”
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Dumb. Your eye is worst at detecting red light, but if you go by how much light you need to see, colors are all the same. Get one of the fancier LEDs with a good digital controler, and you can turn it down (and thus reduce batery use too) as much as you need.
LoL.
Buying a “fancy LED with a good digital controller” to illuminate the interior of an eyepiece case seems a bit of overkill to me.
The whole point of these lights is that once your eyes are dark adapted you (a) don’t want to ruin the adaption and (b) really need very little light to function.
By way of comparison: astronomers loathe the full moon because it floods the planet with far to much light.