Laser-tracing emissions

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By Collin Cunningham
Posted 2009/01/21 @ 3:00 pm
Category Energy

The Nuage Vert (or “Green Cloud”) installation aims to heighten public energy awareness in Helsinki by outlining the emissions of a local power plant via green laser. As a previous commenter points out, there’s a bit of irony present due to the high-powered laser’s high-power consumption – still, altering the local mindset for the better seems worth it. – Nuage Vert â€œGreen Cloudâ€ Illuminates Emissions [via Mighty Ohm]

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5 Responses to Laser-tracing emissions

Timm Murray on January 21st, 2009 at 5:15 pm said:

I haven’t been able to find details on what kind of laser they’re using, but since your eyes pick up green better than red, a 5mW green laser goes a lot farther than a 5mW red. I’d imagine they’re using quite a bit more than that here, but there are some pretty powerful ones out there:

http://www.alfalight.com/press-detail.asp?articleid=75

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Anonymous on January 21st, 2009 at 5:58 pm said:

Beware of water vapor!

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A on January 21st, 2009 at 7:49 pm said:

a .65W pump diode for a green laser won’t give that much output, maybe 200mW. Green lasers aren’t very powerful, I would bet that the laser used in this isn’t more than 500mW. It would probably use a bit more watts than that to drive it, but it would probably be less than 100W, so it is very minuscule compared to what it’s pointing out.

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dnny on January 21st, 2009 at 9:48 pm said:

I have seen this live, I had to see how bright would 8W laser be. The weather was not the best but I was still disapointed about the laser. One could expext that the output would be huge, but outdoors it loses much… I will try to dig some flickr arcihves for the laser picures.

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Clint on January 22nd, 2009 at 9:04 am said:

I’m a little concerned about pilots that happen to catch a stray laser beam in the eye through a hole in the cloud. Last I heard, blindly (pun somewhat intended) firing high-power lasers into the sky is a safety hazard. If they use a safer lower-wattage laser, I doubt their artistic experiment will be terribly visible.

–clint

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