Re: Star Hopping

[Larry Smith <larry.smith@SNOW.EDU>]

At 7:22 PM -0700 10/8/02, Herbert H Gottlieb wrote:

> I would expect that you could have difficulty seeing the laser beam
> unless
> there is a minimum of dust or other particles in the air to scatter the
> laser beam back to your eye.  Isn't that a problem??

You'd be surprised how well it works.  The laser pointer needs to be fairly
high-powered, though.  With ours we can see the green spot on a hill a mile
away.  The length of the beam as it points to a star gives students all the
parallax they need.  They even find the green star pointer helpful when we
use the binoculars.

If you haven't tried one of these run, don't walk, to see one in action.

Larry

This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.