Hi Chuck, It just so happens that I received my 20 mW laser yesterday. I now own 4 green lasers, and the 20 mW is definitely the brightest of the 4. At first, when I went outside and compared them alone, I, too, thought that the 20 mW was about the same as the optimized 5 mW laser I bought two years ago with Doug Say from the OAS (we each bought one, but got a better price by buying two together). However, when I brought my wife outside and had her turn them on two at a time with me about 15 feet away, the 20 mW was significantly easier to see. I had her use them one at a time in random order to outline the Big Dipper, and was able to pick out the 20 mW every time. I conducted these tests using Energizer e^2 Lithium batteries out of the same freshly opened package, and made sure the laser and batteries were all at the same room temperature when I started. Of the 4 lasers, the cheap one I bought from Lucky Duck two months ago is definitely the dimmest. :-( Based on my results, the email Chuck received from Noah Acres seems plausible. I'm happy with my $79 20 mW laser (plus $8 shipping). Wayne A. Sumner Math/Physics/Astronomy/Engineering Boy's Tennis Coach Northridge High School Davis School District (801) 402-8610
<cmh856@aol.com> 03/20/07 7:17 AM >>> Noah Acres of Lucky Duck was very prompt in his reply to my email. It turns out that there is a happy ending. After checking the serial number of my laser to see what the actual tested power was, he wrote:
*** "Chuck, We have that one tested on 2/15 at a little over 19mw. Normally they will vary about 10% depending on batteries, temperature, etc. I think it's more likely your older pointer is greater than 5mw. There really is no such thing as "factory tuned." It just means they tested their lasers and set aside the higher powered ones to sell for a bit more. When did you buy it? Up until about 2 years ago it was pretty common to find lasers that were way over powered (being 10mw or more). As manufacturing processes become more refined lasers turned out a lot closer to spec (the spec being exactly 5mw). It used to be where you might find a few 1mw and a few 20mw in the same batch and a lot more in the range between; but now they're all really close to 5mw. We actually set these to 20mw by design though. Thanks, Noah Acres Luckyduck.com" *** So, it would appear that my old faithful Beta pointer was in the 20mw range all along- no wonder I felt it superior to all other 5mw lasers I'd seen, it actually was- and that explains why the Beta and Ducky laser beams are identical in brightness. But of course had we done the laser test in 2005, we probably would have discovered that by now. Folks could have had a 20mw laser long before now; those of you who bought the Beta pointer should feel good that you were ahead of the trend in this instance. Don't feel cheated if you bought the Lucky Duck "20mw" unit, you got what you paid for, and for a little less money than the Beta. One more thing, Acres wrote in a prior email, in answer to my observation that the label didn't match the power rating of the laser: "There is a bit of difficulty in importing lasers greater than 5mw. To simplify things, we used the same 5mw labels as always, even though some are of greater strength." That seems a bit sketchy, but as long as the laser is really a 20mw unit, I'll accept an "eyewash" label. He's the one that has to deal with government import restrictions, not me. I still want to do the laser comparison test, anybody else? ________________________________________________________________________ AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com. _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.utahastronomy.com