The Necessary Item for Amateur Astronomers

A laser pointer pen is necessary for an amateur astronomer, because it can help you to find out the star you like in the night sky. Just like the navigator of the vast sky. How to choose the laser pointer pen as an amateur astronomer? As there are various kinds of laser pointer pens in the market. In fact, the power and price are the most important factors you should take into consideration. As far as I am concerned, I think the laser pointer pen whose power is ranging 20mW-50mW is suitable. Those laser pointer pens whose power is higher than 50mW are very glaring even in the dusky environment. And people can find that the laser pointer pens can be divided as red laser pointer and green laser pointer in the shop. Generally speaking, the output power of green laser pointer is far higher than red laser pointer which means it is brighter in the night sky. The amateur astronomers should choose the green laser pointer pen though it is more expensive than the red one.

The price of laser pointer pen is often related with the bandwidth and stability. The narrower the band is, the more expensive it will be. But I suggest you to select the laser pointer pen whose power is lower than 50mW and price is lower than 20 dollars since the naked eyes can not distinguish the difference.

Besides, the high power means the high electricity consuming. If you buy the expensive laser pointer pen, you should prepare more batteries at the same time. It is not economical and environmental certainly. But if you need this kind of laser pointer pen indeed, maybe a pair of rechargeable batteries can help you to deal with this problem.

Finally, some people may find such problem: why the laser pointer pen always runs out in the night even it works normally in the day? The truth is the media of laser pointer pen is semiconductor which is very sensitive to temperature. It can not work if the temperature is too low, so you just need to cover it by hands before you use it.

I would like to remind you the risk of laser pointer pen, because even low powered laser pointer pen can burn through the plastic bag in 0.5 meters. Especially, you must put it away from children. If the children point to other people's eyes by laser pointer pen for a while, it will burn out their eyes. It is very dangerous.