Message posted by lone wolf on March 23, 2005 at 9:15:25 PST:
I've shot near-IR photgraphs of the base, but only during the day to get through the haze. The near IR film cuts off at 820nM. I suppose if a building were as hot as a soldering iron, I could see something. What you are proposing is thermal imaging, which is much more difficult. The rifle scopes are generally IR with a mounted illuminator. Quite a joke really since you show up like a flare on night vision. IR is around 1uM. For thermal imaging, you need to reach about 10uM. You should be able to find the black body radiation equation on the net. Plug in some real life temperatures, convert them to wavelength, and you will the difficulty of the task. There is a general misconception between night vision, infrared photography or vision, and thermal imaging. Night vision is visible light amplification. The tubes have some response at near-IR, so you can see hot objects. Since there is some response at near-IR with nightvision, you can use IR illuminators with night vision. Infra-red imaging is detecting heat, not amplifying the light, though it may do that too. Light down to about 2um would still be considered IR, and 2um is the limit of CCDs without color masks. Thermal imaging is very long wave light, between 3um and 10um. Once the wavelength gets too long, you reach ambient temperature, so there is no contrast in the thermal image.
In Reply to: Any Groom Lake Infra-Red photos about? posted by Ian on March 23, 2005 at 7:44:22 PST:
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