Это видео недоступно.
Сожалеем об этом.
Can You See A Laser Pointer From The Space Station?
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 9 июл 2018
- Green laser pointers are amazingly useful tools for teaching the general public about the night sky, it's easy to point out specific targets and have everyone know what you mean. Sometimes people will point out satellites and even the ISS, so I wanted to figure out whether an astronaut on the ISS would be able to see lasers from people on the ground.
Here's the original video of the ISS Flash project:
• ISS FLASH PROJECT
As an airline pilot, once again please do not shine them at me.
Is that your excuse for 9/11?
@@SteveVi0lence lmao
Sure Captain Twat...
SteveVi0lence lmao
@@SteveVi0lence lmao
Answer to video title:
YES, IF IT'S MADE BY STYROPYRO.
Illuminate the ISS?
This sounds like a job for Styropyro!
@THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN more like the láser god
He´ll burn straight through the ISS :D
Don't give him this challenge, he will try to pop it with a laser ;-(
He will melt a hole in the wall :P
He would laugh at 5mw
Expected a "no" got a "yes".
Answers at 6:42
Joe thx
I once shot my high powered blue laser at the space station while recording the live feed from the space station web cam on my computer and you could see a blue dot flashing from the ground. the problem is I was never able to recreate it so I dont know for sure if the flash was from me or something else. Edit: I just found the video, the quality is not great, in fact its rather bad since I had to download it off face book, but I'll email it to you.
That's pretty neat! I might have to try that for myself one night.
Did you recover the photons that were dissolved in the atmosphere in the process? :)
Could you post a link here as well?
Oh you could phase-modulate the laser and use that to confirm the distance to the space station, that would be cool.
Are the live feeds still active? Because I was watching a feed the other night, while also monitoring the ISS tracker website, and the images of the land the ISS was passing over didn't seem to match, so I guessed I was watching an old feed or something.
* puts on black hat *
What if we tried more power?
Paul Paulson school lazerings would happen
I read this in Will Wheaton's voice because he was the reader for the Audiobook "What If".
what if we CROSS THE BEAM!
Look at Isaac Arthur channel, idk the exact video, it's one of the space warfare, stating why lasers as space weapons are a bad idea and useless...
I knew I'd find a comment like that somewhere, hah
In a lab I work with a laser. The manual says the minimum eye-safe distance in the direction of the beam is 158km. I always wondered what that number might be good for.
Despite all the complaining about how long this video is I loved all of it and I appreciated the entire explanation. Thank you for sharing.
J Gregory Graves Some have more intellectual curiosity than others. Some of us like to read an entire book, or article, &some just wanna thumb through& look at pictures with captions.
@@Chief2Moon Yep, it's what makes the world go round... so to speak : )
8 minutes is pretty short
They should just Google it. Then the answer is instant 😉.
Long? It's only 8 minutes
The picture of the laser aimed at the space station from the ground was pretty neat. Glad someone made this experiment. ^_^
Fail for the searchlights, though. And that was two 1-watt blue lasers. Green is much more visible to the eye, in terms of frequency response, but still doubtful that a single 5mW green laser would be visible from 500km into space. I'm sure the atmosphere would diffuse or filter most of that energy anyway.
There is not really such a thing as a fail when it comes to properly conducted experiments. Just positive or negative results ;)
_at least 10 others have too_
Not always. It's a fun theory but unproven. What it means is, "don't even bother trying," so those 10 become 0. Where would we be if it was always 0? The problem is caucasians are the founders of civilization and technology, who are also the worlds smallest minority. And people are upset we invent everything and want us to stop so they have a chance at getting 1. But they will always be 0. Social Darwinism.
+Cythil the experiment was for the search lights, as explained, the blue laser was only to align the search lights and was turned off to allow for the search lights to be seen. It's like experimental drug testing and only the control group lived, and calling it a good drug test. That's not a properly conducted experiment!
Again. Even when you get a negative result it is still a result Officer Meow Meow Fuzzyface. Then you know that the search lights in that setup won't cut it. Now I admit I have not read there research papers. But from what I can tell it was a resounding success that gave negative results. ^_^
Well.. If it is illegal to dazzle parties, I'll just stay at home.
Such a great comment...
best comment.
I came
👍
Your comment pleases me.
Who else is just scrolling through comments whilst he chats away, until you reach someone's comment directing you to the answer Yes at 6:50?
Me! Thank you.
Well someone had to say it
God Bless You child.
Me
Thank you kindly!
Rule #1 Never point a laser at a person, auto, or aircraft. When I was studying Laser technology back in 1978 & 79 we had to memorize the safety rules concerning lasers and yep, it is #1!! Great Video Scott!!!
What about self defense
So I could grab my 2.5 watt laser, and send a message to iss saying:
S E N D N U D E S
Beware Cthulhu
Michal
for berevity
I suggest:
SND NOODS
Would be faster/easier to send in morse.
stinkyfungus tru
post bobs
Or perhaps more fitting would be:
T R A N S M I T N U D E S
but its longer
I'm a pilot and have been lased a few times at night and it is quite annoying, but I can't say it's ever blinded me. The whole hand held nature just makes it flash randomly. These days though, with GPS we just tell ATC the lat/long or street address and they send the cops, 5 minutes later we can see a more satisfying kind of flashing lights :)
So glad to hear from a objective pilot with a real experience 😅 thank you for your time
@@lusiscuswho is your comment aimed at? I have trouble working out who is replying to who😢
@@CraigLandsberg-lk1ep hmmmmm, I think I have somehow posted on the wrong video, I do apologise.
Seriously, don't point those green lasers at aircraft. I was the observer on a law enforcement helicopter for a number of years. We had one idiot paint us with a laser as we were orbiting over the scene of a murder and foot pursuit. The pilot was dazzled enough we had to break off the orbit until he regained his eyesight. Unfortunately for Laser Dude, we also had a GPS following the Night Sun searchlight, and we were able to light him up before we broke off. It took five patrol units about five minutes to have him custody after fighting with officers and doing the electric boogaloo for a couple minutes.. He served 4.5 years in prison on a combined state and federal felony charge. Just don't do it.
Sar Jim Damn!!!
glad to hear they got what they deserved.
i have a 200mw laser. but i am well aware of the dangers. (including the invisible wider spread beam you get with green lasers)
4.5 years??? BS.. messing around with a laser shouldn’t net you any longer than a few months jail time
@@drifterax7731 blinding a pilot thats flying a plane with 300 people is pretty bad
@Håkan Lundberg the problem is that this generally happens during landing. not exactly a time you want to be blinding a pilot is it?
When I lived in England, food deliveries could never find my house. So I would go outside and shine a green laser into the air for them to find me. It was a bit more powerful than a pointer.
*ISS explodes
you had aeriel food delivery?
@@natesmartkid6493 You could see the laser from ground level from over a mile away.
@@scottd9448 yup. I live in an apartment (4 stories) and shit mate I could shine towards those skyscrapers
That's assault, you can get arrested for that, consider yourself lucky and never do something like that ever again
Communications are down. Get the laser guys.
Never mind the lasers; call the hams. There is amateur radio onboard the ISS, and they use that to communicate when the fancy stuff goes pear-shaped.
But how much of the light would be obstructed in the atmosphere?
Somewhere between 0.1% and 100% depending on the weather.
LOL, actually the most accurate answer that can be given!
Considering that every bit of laser you see as a line, is a bit of laser not getting through the atmospere, I would say "more than ideal for this purpose"
This question was on my mind throughout the entire video. I was expecting at least a rough estimate, in favorable weather conditions of course. Since anybody trying this would probably wait for a clear sky.
Also depending on altitude and pollution level. But given that the raw brightness under ideal conditions would be like Sirius: Even with 50% atmospheric absorption, it would still be easily visible.
6:25 ayy that's a cool effect
funny thing is, that's just an old camera mounted on the ISS :P
Yeah, i admit very nicely computer generated sunset.
When you want to play with an alien cat
Thx, Scott for reminding everyone not to point those lasers at aircraft. You'd be amazed how often it still happens, especially on approach. :)
Scott Major Yup, I've been hit once while flying an Arrow. Thankfully, it wasn't bad and I just went out and flew around the practice area for my region for about 30 minutes while my night vision returned. Reported it, but nothing ever came out of it.
Is it in any way likely that someone with a mirror or even a reflective wristwatch can use it to point it at a helicopter and actually be noticed? This is a survival tip I've heard a few times and always doubted until I saw this video.
Sheev Palpatine During daylight it needs to be really reflective (signal mirror) and the pilot has to be looking for it. I've seen those anti bird devices, that are basically mirrors spinning in the wind, on buildings from miles away, but it wasn't like they took my attention; more like I happened to look over there and noticed the strobe effect.
At night, a strong flashlight is easily seen from miles. Just as you can see headlights miles away when up on a hill, the same thing applies. The difference is the "background". I can see you waiving a flashlight in the middle of nowhere with no other light sources much easier than if you were waiving the same flashlight at me from the center of Times Square.
MP I just had two reports from separate pilots out over the ocean say they were hit with lasers literally a few hours ago. I'm like, you are over the ocean right now, how is that even possible? We get reports quite frequently.
FriskyDingo it must be Atlantis or people at ISS on their resting time.
Jaw is legit floored open right now... I actually had _no idea_ that laser light could still be _that_ visible at _that_ range... Amazing.
Everything is better with lasers.
L.D. Johnson you do realize that 300-400km is not that much of a range?)) and you do see photons arriving from the Sun, right?)
ditto
S C I think the sun produces a bit more than 5mw of visible light. xD
Srsly tho its amazing how little power is needed to transmit information across such distance. I dont know how much energy you would need to do the same with a radio but I assume a lot more and also you’d probably need a big antena on both ends.
6:50 6 minutes and 50 seconds to get a definitive yes XD
Lol ikr! Stop babbling and get to the point!
@@LOLmusics boo hoo
Josh 😭 😢 😭:( :( 😖😖😖😭😭😭😤😤😔😢😢😭😭
@@LOLmusics you already said that, cutie pie
Tony Graham why would you watch a video on this topic if you weren’t looking for an explanation? If you were looking for a yes or a no, a simple google search would have sufficed- not an eight minute long video. This isn’t a tutorial with two minutes of irrelevant babbling at the start, it’s an explanation of something.
I know several people who've been lazed while flying an airplane. some weren't affected, but most had vision loss between a couple seconds and a several minutes. We even had to shut down flight operations to an airport after a pilot needed medical eye treatment due to a laser. Scott is right. Don't shine lasers at aircraft. Not only is it extremely dangerous to the flight crew, but if caught, you could face hefty fines and prison time. Also, it's really easy to fly over your position, get Lat/Long coordinates, and call the cops.
Handheld would be tricky, but with an off the shelf LX200 telescope armed with my optical tracking software you would be able to keep a pointer centered on the station automatically and without needing any manual adjustment. As you mentioned, this has been done before with the astronaut in question being notified ahead of time that it was going to be happening. I wonder though if you encoded a laser to fire off a quick and simple 'Hi ISS' message in Morse code and diligently fired it at the station on every early evening or early morning opportunity, if they would eventually notice it by accident.
Astronomy Live .... .. .. ... ...
All dots
Astronomy Live Do it, please!
And use a bigass laser atleast 1w green.
Could you program the mount to track the stations trajectory and at the right speed though ? As they are only designed to track at speed of the earths rotation I presume. TIA
There is absolutely no reason I need to know this information. I enjoyed it thoroughly all the same. Thanks for that 😁👍.
This was THE most interesting thing RUclips has recommended to me in a long time.👍👍
As a light plane pilot, I have been lit up several times while landing. It appears as a very bright spot off to the side while flying. There is really only one thing that could cause that. Its only mildly annoying, but I also know there are much more powerful lasers out there you could buy.
Was it a red one?
I remember the first time I visited Walt Disney World (1998), they used a very powerful laser as part of their evening fireworks display. This amazingly bright thing was turned on only for a couple of seconds at a time, but was so bright that it "wrapped the horizon" from the perspective of the audience each time they activated it. My impression was that if it had hit an aircraft in flight, it probably would have blinded the flight crew for some indefinite period - as it was very bright. The next times I went back (2000, 2009), this super bright laser was no longer part of the fireworks show - which was probably a good thing, so it couldn't accidentally knock airplanes out of the sky if it happened to hit one.
When using lasers at that scale, and pointing it to the sky like that, you’ve talked with the nearby airports and/or the FAA beforehand to get it cleared. Those lasers can be up to 60W, so if the beam hits a pilot correctly, they could get permanent eye damage in under a second. Using lasers in 1998 required high voltage, water cooling, advanced software, and a lot of space, so they most likely dropped it because it was a hassle.
I know this comment is 4 years old as of now, but felt like giving you an answer, haha.
And now it's even cheaper since you don't have to talk to FAA, just fire up Flightradar24 and watch out for planes lol
I used to shoot womp rats with my t16 back home so nailing that space station with a green Lazer should be easy....
@Mag yep... you need to turn on the targeting computer!
Aww nothing like an old Luke Skywalker line from the movie Star Wars to make a joke! Good job, I like it!
🤣🤣🤣
Jeff somersby yeah i used to shoot ants with a tank back in the old country
Yeah, I can confirm this happened with me. Naturally, all Lukes born are excellent aimers. Well, besides when I am using my telescope but that is because it has a cheap mount. I suppose the answer at the end of the day is you get what you pay for.... :(
Stay on target
Scott, years back I was landing at KHYX at night. At the missed approach point, at 200 feet and a half mile out I noticed a car on the taxiway at the approach end of the runway. At that instant I got hit with a laser and lost all my vision. I was blind. Knowing that changing power or making any control inputs would cause the aircraft to become unstable I simply held the controls where they were and waited to impact the ground in a wings level, controlled descent rate (~300 fpm) At the last instant I saw a faint glow from a runway light in the lower corner of my right eye and flared. The arrival was firm but not violent. My wife had been looking away towards the lights of town still had her vision and she verbally steered us to the taxiway and back to the ramp. By then I was beginning to see faintly and I jumped out of the plane and was going looking for the drunk (probably) idiots. The wife physically held on to me as she knew what I intended to do.
At a star party the young guys were firing a camera strobe light into the eyepiece of a 10" newtonian reflector. The bullets of light going up into space were mesmerizing.
Dr. O
You didn't consider one important factor: atmospheric attenuation. Lot of photons will be absorbed by air and moisture. Correct?
Manimozhian Kandasamy correct
I know right
@
Manimozhian Kandasam, Exactly, atmosphere is the reason we see stars as freckles of light, something visibly "twinkling", instead of pure dots of light (which they are), or in worst case the atmosphere totally obstructs any light from the stars.
Even with all of that it can be seen. In fact- the 'space freaks' use a laser to deflect a laser off of the moon. As their are multiple mirror deflectors on the moon. Not you standard over the counter ones. These are bored people with money to spend. They can return and their laser sent up even though brief. So yes- it is more than plausible cause the ISS is nowhere near the distance of the moon. They can see traffic, lights, fires, with no real equipment from the ISS. Ham Operators make contact with them on the ISS with no beam as they pass over. Which is on the 100-400mhz bands. HF would have a dopplar effect and make contact even MORE likely. VHF/UHF has almost no propagation so with that being said. It would take a fixed laser to hit the space station. Take 500 feet of thread and make it straight between the 2. Then move the start of the thread 1/16th of a inch and see how far it misses at the end. By hand it would be VERY hard to hit and maintain. A fixed one with a telescope inline would work and be seen by the crew as well. There is footage of lasers hitting the ISS actually. Green one but of unknown power and focus.
Attenuation is not nearly as big a deal from the ground up as it is from space down, owing to the distance from the object that the intervening air is located at. There is another video on this, something like, what would pictures look like if you used hubble to take pictures of the ground.
So you are saying I need to make an arduino space station tracker, then add a 1 watt laser and make it blink in Morse code to an email account in hopes they will send me a message?
Sounds like a plan.
I can see this becoming more popular and the ISS being bombarded with green lasers, the cat is out of the bag.
There is one small caveat to all of this. Those in the Western USA have relatively low humidity, clear skies much of the time. Not so much here in the Midwest, especially in the summer. Refraction of light due to air particulates, including humidity, could significantly scatter those photons enough to make seeing a laser light much more difficult from space.
I have a small green light laser that is suppose to extend 20 miles thru the atmosphere- specifically for search and rescue. I would point it at an aircraft or boat if I was trying to get help in an emergency situation. As a field geologist I used to use a mirror to flash sunlight at the helicopter still several miles away. It worked very effectively (this was pre gps and pre walkie talkie).
You were trying to signal a helicopter pre walkie talkie? Did the helicopter have a flux capacitor and topped out at 88mph or you just didn’t know radios existed well before helicopters?
Now I want an SF story where people on a blockaded planet communicate with allies in orbit using morse code and a laser pointer...
Start writing it.....
A few months ago I was looking out the passenger window on a night flight at 39000 feet, and someone on the ground started pointing a green laser at the airplane. At that altitude it was not near enough to blind or incapacitate but I was surprised how obvious it was what someone on the ground was doing even that high up.
You forgot to mention by how much you would need to lead the target. From my estimates I chose a 1200km round trip which is 4ms, and the station is going ~8km/s so you must lead by ~32m, which is much less than the beam diameter you calculated for that range. So that's not a problem either.
Light is also refracted by the atmosphere but this effect basically cancels out if you are aiming visually at the ISS because optics works about the same backwards and forwards.
Took the words right out of my mouth, and you took the time to calculate it! Well done sir!
someone gets it yes sir! exactly, this is a year old ...if you see this? read my comment it's last one im sure lol
He didn't forget to mention it. It is simply irrelevant. He also didn't mention correcting for time dilation either and for the same reason.
If you see the space station it's some time just after dark, and from the station the area of the Earth you are in would be dark, so they might see a star light up from this area. Of course they probably already see a lot of city lights and things, so picking out a twinkle would be pretty hard. I wonder what the brightest things on the ground are that are seen from the space station.
Don't aim a laser at some satellite that might be able to respond in kind but with 1000x the power ..
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyus_(spacecraft)
That's OK, I only aim at small moons
just make sure its a moon
My small moon aims it laser at MC-80s....
Paul Weaver. That's no moon, it's a space station!
There was an exploit on network equipment where you could read the data off of 10Mbit (or maybe it was 100MBit) Ethernet by pointing a sensor at the flickering light on the equipment display because they had hooked that light more or less directly up to the signal line. That was pretty nifty. If you could modulate the light from a laser pointer at high speed, it would be interesting to see what the bandwidth limit was.
And that might have applications elsewhere. Space probes might be able to aim at earth accurately enough to use a direct line-of-sight laser for communication, and you could put one on them that had much lower beam divergence. Bandwidth to space probes is kind of limited. But that might be a way to increase it.
Seen ppl did that hardware magic before, it is not ok for daily usage though, since the frame we loss is atrocious.
Laser communication exists and is mainly used for communication between satellites (starlink for example uses it)
I modulated a cheap red laser pointer and used it to communicate with audio over a more than 100 mile path. The laser light from this cheap laser pointer was easily seen with our unaided eyes over thisc100+ mile pathm This also was through far more air and dust than between us and the ISS. It was hard to point it and we didn't have a moving target, but once on target, it was an easy path.
If you illuminate a police helicopter around here, they have got very efficient at quickly finding out where the laser came from and send a patrol car out there.
As a pilot myself, thanks for emphasizing the danger of lasers to aircraft. I have been subjected to a laser illumination event, and I can tell you that if I hadn't covered my eyes as quickly as I had, I may have had permanent eye damage. As it was, I was able to land safely, but I will never forget the experience.
How high off the ground were you?
I was about 2000 feet above the ground climbing out after doing a touch and go in Ponca City, OK
+Paul Kerman (Kerbonaut) hey there, I was wondering if you are at the maximum cruising altitude of 10.000 meters, and I point the laser in front of the airplane, let's say, 50 meters in front of it, and move it along as the airplane moves, would you be able to see it? If there would be some clouds I suppose you could, but if there wouldn't be?
This is the same scenario as the above video, just on a smaller scale. Again, aiming lasers at aircraft is NEVER a good idea.
Laser incidents seem to happen most near airports, and subsequently, critical phases of flight. A flight crew in the heaviest workload of the flight just doesn't need any surprises or distractions.
This is so cool...so much more than I can put into words. This represents something that just makes me feel euphoric. I don't think I can explain it in a way that most people would understand, but that video Scott links is incredible. Long distance communication, with something that maybe ought not work is fabulous.
I can't explain it correctly. It's just......so cool.
What about pointing to geostationary weather satellites? They are far away (36 000 km), but you could aim precisely with many pointers ...
I don’t know why I really needed to know this but searched for it and you answered it perfectly, thanks!
Pointing lasers at aircraft is not only a "bad idea," it is a federal offence that could land you in federal prison {no time off for "good behavior"), loose your right to vote, travel internationally, ever posses a firearm, or likely ever have a real job. Many Ebay or Alibaba lasers have power beyond legal limits. pointing one drunkenly at, for instance. a police helicopter, could change the arc of your life as dramatically as being busted as a meth dealer. Keep that in mind. The cops do.
Alberto Knox
Just being the devil's advocate here:
"What is a 'Federal Offence' or a 'Federal Prison' or 'time off for good behavior'?"
Don't assume RUclips is watched only/mainly by "USA" residents... Specially Science/Space Videos!.
Just say "it's against the Law in the U.S.A." or something...
Also:
There's many more Countries with Laws against even Owning a Firearm than any Law against what You point Your Laser at (besides airplanes near airports - the most dangerous part of air travel is always taking off or landing) and even less against Owning a Laser Pointer.
(One is actually used to kill things, the other one is just a "health hazard" ABOVE certain power levels, mostly to their owners who use it more, and an "annoyance" BELOW them - though MOST people who buy Stronger Lasers are Science minded people that would be careful to, at least, not inconvenience anyone with what they do, much less pointing it to aircraft On Purpose...)
BTW:
Most prisons in the World are part of "Public infrastructure" which means they're owned by the Countries' Government.
Doesn't even make sense to have Privately Owned Prisons really... Specially when it's the Government, its Laws and its Judicial System that Puts people in them and, normally, only for serious Crimes that are actually considered dangerous to the Society/Population/Country...
(Who wants to waste money on unnecessary things?...)
And NO: Most Countries will NOT give any Less time in prison due to "Good Behavior"... But they WILL increase a Prison Sentence for (any) "Bad Conduit"...
Bye then.
You're in the UK, right? You can spend 5 years in your "public infrastructure" for pointing a laser at any vehicle. That is only if you aren't charged with terrorism, which has in fact happened in your country.
These are good things to keep in mind, but also, as a pilot myself, since these thing often happen on approach, where you are looking at the ground in front of you, imagine trying to guide a big object that’s often being blown around by wind at a target only a few meters across while having big black spots burned into your vision. Just don’t shine lasers at aircraft people.
that's if they don't just flat out shoot them dead for "threatening" them
Bill Kerr
In the nethelands those high powered green laser pointers have been banned after a plane got blinded by one of them
Thing is, cheap lasers for showing things in the sky are usually around 20 mW. San Antonio group did a 1 W laser. Yes, blue and therefore visually dimmer, but 1 W. That's some insane power for a handheld laser.
Yeah, it's not too insane though. You can get up to 6w handheld lasers online from places like pyrocreations. I've got the 3 watt and its pretty awesome, a lot brighter than my old 1w and 2w wicked lasers.
You can buy all the components and put one together for pretty cheap. My 1.8 watt handheld was around $140.
Yeah you really need to wear glasses for anything over 500mw no matter how careful you are being. That's just what I do though, you should probably wear glasses with any laser over 5mw but where's the fun in that lol
I bought one on Ebay that'll light your cigarette or yer doobage no probby.
Standard
7:35 if you just want the answer
CJ Bants-THANK YOU
He was killing me 🥱......thanks
thanks
CJ Bants thanks
5:23 that was an amazing shot. thank you for slowing it down and zooming in
When a star party inadvertantly started an interstellar war. 😛
those guys with the boards accidentally sent a bad word about the orange haired Martian president's wife.
The astronauts experienced time travel, they saw 1.67 ms in the past😂😂😂
I was very impressed with the space station against the sun!
"It wouldn't be brighter than the brightest star in the sky" the sun: am I a joke to you?
Now invert the idea and imagine how powerful the stars visible at earth are
Just amazing !!
This is one of the coolest videos I've seen in a while
Thanks for shining a light on the subject.
Cheap laser: $10, wow
Wait, robotic aram: $1000000
I have bought laser for 3$, so the laser is even cheaper :P
A nice GoTo telescope mount with satellite tracking ability shouldn't be that expensive.
If I recall correctly, it seems that one of the Apollo 11 astronauts commented during their time on the moon that they suspect that they caught a glimpse of a high power laser that was trying to detect the retro-reflector that they had placed on the surface. I did take a college lab where we measured the distance from our location to both the Apollo 11 and Apollo 14 retro-reflectors, but we were using a pulsed UV laser that was several watts in strength (I don't remember exactly ... seems like 3W.) It is interesting to think that if our experiment would have been in the visible spectrum, it may have been visible from the Moon.
Corwin Christensen the first laser was actually bounced off the moon on May 9, in 1962 by MIT.
Wait, What? 2629 days before man first set up the retro reflector on the moon to prove the NASA/"Mankind" was actually there.
Kinda like those cameras in space that's always takes images of satellites and voyagers travelling through space.
@@vansfpv5198 Are you stupid? They were measuring their own light that they knew the wavelength of from a reflective body in space. The Moon always reflects the Sun, so if you set up your own laser and measure how much light comes back how is that unfeasible?
I haven't heard that before, but I have heard that Buzz Aldrin saw flashes which he didn't understand at the time, turned out to be cosmic rays.
2 videos this quickly? Wow.
The folks complaining about how long the video is really have no clue what channel they are watching. Your thing is explaining the science and background surrounding the topic from start to finish. But I suppose it’s a small price to pay to be on the recommendation tab
For what it's worth, those red and green laser light show Christmas decorations that people point at their houses are visible from commercial airliners at 40,000'. If you are flying over the US at night in December, look down at populated areas, and you'll see twinkling red and green spots.
The practical engineering channel had a project called International space station tracker. It is a cool little project to make a machine that always points directly at the space station. I wonder how accurate that would be with a laser mounted on the arm.
Lol add styropyros laser bazooka
NASA uses lasers to track the moon (lasers and retro-reflectors on the moons surface) so surely we could annoy the ISS with a bright enough laser...
Thanks for confirming that... :)
the beam width by the time it hits the moon is around 4 miles wide...now do the math you'll see not many photons hit their laser ranging devices on the surface of the moon.
In college, my laser instructor Professor Jerry Hathaway tricked me and my classmate, Chris Knight, into building a laser weapon for the U.S. Air Force. By the time we found out, the laser had been mounted to a B1 Bomber. Fortunately, Lazlo Hollyfeld, the genius who lived in the walls figured out a way to fill Prof. Hathaways house with popcorn, so we aimed the laser there.
As we watched Prof. Hathaways house burst from popcorn expansion, we froliced in the buttery treat in slow motion, accompanied by some moving 80's pop music (everybody, after all, wants to rule the world.).
Sincerely;
Mitch Taylor.
I’ve seen the video evidence supporting this moment of real genius.
Link????
I remember that movie - Real Genius!
Sir have you have had any interactions with uhh _marijuana_
And by the look of him now Val Kilmer ate all the popcorn afterwards.
I don’t know why but I literally felt like I could listen to this guy talk all day lol. Nice delivery and very interesting
so, a 5mw laser would be as bright as sirius, how would a 100 or 1000mw laser look like?
Brighter.
lol, you are technically correct. I was wondering how much.
Ask the people of Alderaan.
Wait, you can't... they're dead.
You're talking about weapons now, not just a laser pointer anymore.
Rocket scientist: NEED MOAR BOASTERS !!!
Physicist: NEED MOAR POAWER !!!
Have we been blinding extraterrestrial air planes this whole time?
You can also collimate the beam from a LASER so the beam divergence is a lot less by having the beam going through a telescope so 10 times the magnification would equate to 10 times less divergence,50 times the magnification equates to 50 times less beam divergence and so on.
bobby: "billy, we shouldn't play with lasers, the warning says they give off radiation"
billy: "that's just a myth, bobby! look!"
*billy shines it upward and it blinds everyone in the cabin and the plane instantly explodes and begins trailing fire and smoke down across the sky*
bobby: "see?!"
billy: "ohhh fff"
PSA: KIDS. DON'T.
Honestly , didnt think the answer would be yes.
Nice Imperial Assault Carrier on the top shelf. It needs some TIE fighters in the docking pylons though. ;-)
Andrew Elliott That's what that is...
Pyrrhic Wins "that's what that is" what? TIE fighters attached to the pylon. It carries 4.
Andrew Elliott Hmm, I had been trying to find out what ship that was until I saw your comment.
In Lake Havasu city in Arizona I had a ferry boat captain tell me a story of his first officer getting injured from a laser that was pointed at them from shore. He was actually injured and incapacitated I was told. The boat service was interrupted. Sounds intense! It wasn't a simple pocket pointer, but it wasn't massive either. I wouldn't have guessed this was a possibility.
A Namm Vet was going to a football game with his wife. When they got out of the car, some kids were driving around taking people with a Lazer pointer. He saw the Lazer on his wife, then shoved her to the ground and swiftly opened his car trunk and grabbed his 45. She asked him what he was doing, thinking he may be having a flash back. He explained that they had been lazed, and if that car comes back around, he was going to kill them. They didn't come back, so nothing happened. Yes, non lethal Lazer can get you killed.
don't your calculations assume the photons are traveling through a vacuum? and thus would the atmospheric interference impede the laser light?
Scatter the light as it is refracting off trillions of dust particles and water molecules...
This was so awesome Scott, I only wish I had some dorky friends to share my excitement with. It's hard being more forward thinking than everyone you know.
As you said, the laser has a beam divergence and pointing it at aircraft will have almost the same effect as pointing it at the space station... I'm pretty sure, that the pilots won't go blind from a regular laser pointer up to 400mW. The sun shining in the cockpit will have thousand times greater intensity than a laser pointer and the pilots still fly every day without any eye damage or crashing...
Very informative, Scott. Thank you. I use a green laser pointer in my back yard with my telescopes. I live within a mile of a regional airport and simply don't use it when aircraft are around.
*The ISS wants to know your location*
Easy. Right there at the green dot on the ground.
I see "Numerical Recipes" on the bookshelf! I loved that book
Light is now being tested for broadband communications to/from space. Look at the "OPALS" project here on RUclips.
It's refreshing to hear someone with a Scottish accent talking about something other than drinking and fighting.
Or football.
9 minutes on a yes or no question, but still thanks for answering 🙃
It's not a yes or no question just a simple yes or no doesn't really tell you anything does it
In 1973 I was in an open field in Iowa with my boy scout troop. It was around 10:00 at night and pitch black. One of our scout members took his high powered flashlight and aimed it into the night sky. He turned it on in this sequence: on - off 2-3-on-on. Suddenly the night sky lit up with around eight high powered lights that encircled us. We were terrified. UFO's? I don't know. But I've never shone a flashlight into the night sky since.
There was a case in the UK of somebody pointing a green laser at a helicopter that was landing not far from his house. The pilot was consequently unable to land, and the guy who the helicopter was coming to pick up (a medical emergency) died. The police later found the laser operator - so think of this when you're tempted to do stupid things with lasers.
I always wondered this. Thank you!
Wouldn’t it be easier to have the laser mounted on the space station pointing to earth?
That would make the experiment infinite times harder. You'd have to design, transport and mount that laser on the ISS. All they need up there is a handheld camera in this experiment.
Von Bergerfurth I don't think so with today's computers and calculations a fixed point on earth would surely be easier to calculate than than trying to calculate exactly the small pinpoint of a fast moving tiny dot.
@@Problembeing that fixed point on earth would be just as hard to track from the ISS as it is to track the ISS from earth, and it would cost millions of dollars.
@@Problembeing you also have the problem of the light of the sun reflected by the ISS, you probably wouldn't see the laser anyway.
Von Bergerfurth that would be a problem firing the laser from Earth I’d suggest. Also, less of a problem at night.
A decent red laser pointer of 15yrs ago would make a spot covering the side of a highway overpass at 2mi and barely be visible. Green seemed an order of magnitude better when they came out; at a mere $300.
Not joking I spotted the space station glide over my house at least twice. The first time it had just separated from the space shuttle, it was so bright about 11 PM eastern time, it was tracking from west to east.
A simple yes or no would have been sufficient
I'm surprised you didn't address path loss. The atmosphere is certainly not 100% transparent - even to ~500nm green laser light. I suspect your magnitude calculation is off by a bit as a result. But I'm glad you did this video. It's nice to know that it could be done in theory.
I learned something designing X-Ray detection boards. For every doubling of the distance from the source, the energy of photons drops by 4.
Inverse square law
That's the 1/r^2 law, and every EM source in the universe obeys it.
I placed a high quality green pointer on the railing of my deck and pointed it at a large white house about a mile +/- away and then went to that house. The green light was sprayed across the entire building and fairly dim
Where has his launch abort tower gon on his Saturn v?
Thought this would he a yes or no answer... Fell asleep.
Don't worry about the space station.... they're usually in a swimming pool or airplane...
What in the double digit IQ did I just read.
Survival tip: Take a laser pointer with you on hiking trips. If you get lost from your element, wait for nightfall and point your laser pointer at the aircraft you see in the night sky.
You would know you succeeded when the cops show up
That's when you point the pointer at a friend and say they did it