Don't forget the Red Cellophane (lots of it)...

Jul 18, 2003

This goes into the category of “important stuff nobody ever mentions.”

Some beginners to the hobby may have yet to attend their first star party.  They’ve heard that red lights are important to preserve your night vision, and they are. But before you take a flood light covered in a single layer of red cellophane to a star party, you’d do well to heed this three-fold warning:

1.) Just because it’s red doesn’t mean that it will preserve your night vision.  A bright red light can still constrict your pupils in the dark. If you don’t believe me, stand in front of a mirror in a dark room. Shine a red light directly into your eyes and see what your pupils do. If they close, even slightly, then you know the light is too bright.

2.) Computer software tricks you into thinking that its “night vision” mode is adequate for the field. Truth is, if you take your laptop to a star party and turn on “night vision” mode without extra layers of red cellophane and/or a light shield, you are likely to get run off the field. This is especially true at very dark sky star parties, such as the Texas Star Party, where the red lights of hundreds of people on the same field tend to accumulate. If you do take your laptop or monitor, make sure that it faces away from others in addition to having shielded the light in the appropriate way.

3.) Film and CCDs are very sensitive to red light. Just because you have a red light in the field doesn’t mean that it’s safe to point around. Keep your lights pointed at the ground at all times. It doesn’t take much to make your neighbor mad when your stray red light accidently finds its way into an open camera shutter.

Truth is that it should be rather difficult reading your charts in the field with the red light you use. If it is too easy, then chances are your light is too bright. You might try a chart table that is evenly illuminated with several dim LCDs.Scattering several dim lights across a wide area is better than using a single bright light covering a small area.

You can learn this the easy way, by taking my advice, or the hard way.  You don’t want to learn this the hard way.

A friend of mine sent this picture to me after learning how much I loved baseball. I thought it was great.