I own an 18.2 mw high-powered laser pointer and have had a young person at one of our parties jump up and stick his hand up in front of the beam about 5 feet from me. It blinded me for a full half hour just from the beam disruption. I had peripheral vision, but even that was spotty with little flashes of light. I am always highly aware of the pointer since this incident and have made sure before beginning a demonstration that everyone fully understands how dangerous this pointer is. I joke anecdotally that it could blind airline pilots, but have heard no concrete evidence of it. We did have to sign a waiver with ZBolt where we purchased this that we would not point it at any earth based objects. To my knowledge a 5 mw laser will not do any damage, but that 18 mw laser is extremely powerful and we know you can see it from at least 1/8 mile indirectly, but we have not tested it out farther than this yet. We live on the east side of Magna just on the border with West Valley and we can shine this on the tip of the Oquirrhs and see a disruption of the beam on the mountain. (I suppose this would be a bad thing since we signed the waiver, but it is mostly unintentional.) NO, I did not have this out on September 21st! :) Lisa Zeigler www.johnstelescopes.com www.mirrorkits.com -----Original Message----- From: Chuck Hards [mailto:chuckhards@yahoo.com] Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2004 6:53 PM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Laser info help? I heard the story on KSL radio, and someone did in fact say that it had to have been a "high-powered" laser; pointers were not mentioned that I recall.