Chuck, I have 5,10 and 20 mw green lasers. The 5 and 10 mw use the AAA pen light batteries but the 20mw pointer uses a lithium battery similar to what you describe, and I like to use it in a teaching situation. I can only see the 5mw laser when the seeing is lousy or there is a bunch of junk in the air. I bought a laser holder from Orion that attaches to their dove-tail mount and I like to use 10mw in my back yard to quickly point my scope at objects when there is no one else around. I would prefer to use a higher output device if I could because as you mentioned they are a lot easier to see. I would like to try that 30mw pen. I think that would be easier to see, good duty cycle wise and still a bit of a safety factor compared to the 200mw light saber. Jim --- On Fri, 2/6/09, Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> wrote: From: Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Fw: Black Jasper APC Green Laser just $24.50! To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Friday, February 6, 2009, 12:26 PM Jim, I'm not familiar with that particular 200mW laser, but my 100mW takes one CR123A lithium 3 volt cell, at $6 to $8 apiece, depending on where I buy them. But I'm still using the same battery that I put in there when I first got it, and I've used it often since. Mine is about the size and diameter of a typical hot-dog frank; not "pen" sized. It came with a print-out of it's actual performance, and actually has a mean output of 112mW, with a stability of 1.87% for the 20 second test duration. The duty cycle for a high-powered diode laser is pretty short. I can only leave mine on continuously for 120 seconds before I have to turn it off and let it cool down for a couple of minutes. If I limit the on-cycle to less than 30 seconds, then it doesn't heat up and can be used with a shorter cool-down cycle. I have yet to see a green laser with a beam bright enough to be used as a star-pointer that is rated for continuous duty (no cool-down cycle required). The higher the power, the shorter the duty cycle. That helps save on the battery use. On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 4:46 AM, Jim Gibson <jimgibson00@yahoo.com> wrote:
Hey Chuck How many batteries per minute does the 200 mw take?
Jim
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