Word: starlight
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
INDIANAPOLIS, IND., Starlight Musicals. Ann Blyth sings her way through Siam in the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic The King...
Last week the Army finally revealed some of the technical wizardry that makes the scopes work. Unlike the World War II infantry sniperscope that illuminated its target with an infra-red beam, the starlight scope needs no light of its own. Thus it is undetectable by enemy sensors. It uses only natural light, no matter how dim-moonlight, starlight, even the faint luminescence of decaying jungle foliage. Capable of amplifying light up to 40,000 times, it literally treats the darkest night...
Heart of the starlight scope is its image-intensifier tube, a sturdy combination of the home TV screen and miniaturized space-age electronics. Focused sharply by the scope's front lens, the slightest flickers of light are directed against a chemical film, causing it to discharge electrons. Boosted along by a 15,000-volt electrostatic field, those electrons smack into a phosphorcoated screen whose light then jars loose still another flock of electrons. The process is repeated three times, and the high-voltage electron acceleration, or energy buildup, produces a progressively brighter image. Besides the light, the only other...
Despite the starlight scope's relative simplicity, the Army's Night Vision Laboratory at Fort Belvoir, Va., had to spend countless hours and $20 million on the design before it was ready for production. One particularly nagging problem was the difficulty of transmitting the image from one stage to the next without excessive distortion or loss of light. Army researchers, under Electrical Engineer Robert S. Wiseman, known as "Mr. Night Vision" to his colleagues, overcame that hurdle by using fiber optics. These unusual lenses are made up of bundles of extremely thin glass fibers, each of which transmits...
...keep starlight scopes from potential enemies and dedicated Peeping Toms, the Pentagon has so far restricted private sales. But eventually the scopes may be adapted for civilian purposes. Astronomers have already used similar devices to increase the power of their telescopes. With the technology now largely declassified, demand may build up among police, underwater explorers and airline pilots-anyone, in fact, who has a legitimate reason for wanting to see in the dark...