Unusual uses for Arc-AAA IR & UV lights

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I'm thinking of buying a couple more ARC-AAA lights and had 2 questions:

1. Does anyone know the useful range of the ARC-AAA UV for detecting scorpions at night? I know they glow under UV lights, but do they show up 10 feet away, or 2 feet away (If I buy one to go searching for scorpions I want to be able to do it standing up versus crawling on my knees).

2. Does anyone out there own both an ARC-AAA IR light and a night vision scope/googles? The reason I ask is that I'm interested in the capability of IR lights to locate veins and bullets in trauma victims. The Air Force figured out that if you shine an IR light thru someone's arms or legs and look at the opposite side with night vision goggles, all you will see are veins (to start an I.V.) and foreign objects (like bullets or shrapnel). Bones, skin, and muscle are fairly IR transparent.

What I am wondering about is how good your equipment needs to be to make use of this effect. Do I need a giant IR light and 3rd generation military night vision equipment? Or can I use an ARC-AAA IR and a $129 owl night scope from Walmart and obtain succesful results. Can someone try this out for me before I decide to buy or not? Thanks!
Ben
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Xenon:
That's some interesting facts!

Those low end consumer night vision scopes have a close focus range of minimum 10 feet or so +/-. I wonder if this is going to be useful for you.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That can be fixed quite easily.
You know those macro pictures that keep showing up on my website?
They came from a camera with a minimum focus of 18" with a binocular lens (the lens from the "big" end) simply held in front of it. This reduces the focal length to around 4". And I have other lenses that let me get to within 1/4" or so of my subject.

The same thing will work on a night vision scope too, as long as you're not dealing with mid-IR or long-IR like the kind used to detect human bodies in the woods. I think glass lenses start becoming partially opaque to IR starting around 4 microns. That's why deep IR lasers like CO2 uses optics made of germanium; as this material is transparent at long wavelengths while glass is not.

Most "home" scopes though, are *probably* sensitive between 0.4 microns up to maybe 2 microns tops, so glass lenses are still perfectly fine for this application.
The lens from the "big end" of binoculars, or from a cheap plastic Tasco telescope might be a good place to start. Since the image you're viewing is transmitted live to the eyepiece, focusing will not be a problem.
 
OK, I have a NV that has a near focus of 15'
frown.gif


Will try to rig an old telescope lens to change the near focus/ Thanks.
 
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