Infrared Night Vision Goggles

Before getting down to night vision goggles, let's first understand the concept of night vision itself. The term night vision refers to the ability to see, with near acute precision, in the dark either due to biological ocular characteristics or via means of artificial technology. Most animals have eyes that are biologically tuned for adapting their vision to see things clearly in dark and nighttime environment. The mechanism behind biological night vision involves a chemical change in the ocular rods. The molecules of rhodospin, a light-sensitive chemical that allows night vision, present in the ocular rods, change their shapes to absorb light rays and particles of illumination. This way, whatever little light there is in the environment gets absorbed by the eyes and such absorption enables the eyes of these animals to adjust to the dark and easily discern their surroundings almost as well as they would have discerned in broad daylight. Man, who is not equipped with such excellent biological night vision has come up with artificial technologies that enable him to experience night vision almost as well other creatures of nature do!

Night Vision Technology

Infrared night vision goggles are based on any of the three categories of night vision technologies invented by man to keep pace with other counterparts in the animal kingdom. These three different night vision technologies are Active Illumination, Image Intensification and Thermal Imaging. Let's take a brief look at each of these to understand how night vision technology works.

Active Illumination technology concept is based upon the guiding principles behind coupling image intensification. This concept is coupled with the inclusion of a light source that falls within a shortwave infrared band of a near infrared band. The effect produced is similar to that of pictures taken by low light cameras.

Image Intensification technology is based on the concept of increasing the magnitude of each illuminatory unit received from all possible sources of illumination available, such as, light of the stars, moon, distant streetlights, etc. IR night vision goggles work on this same principle, coupled with active illumination by infrared rays of a spectral range that is just below the human eye's natural visible spectrum.

Thermal Imaging, as the term suggests, follows the concept of tracking the outlines of objects based upon the difference in temperature between objects in the foreground from objects in the background. This is the guiding concept behind the mechanism of thermal night vision goggles.

How to Make Infrared Night Vision Goggles

Oh yes! You can make night vision goggles for kids or yourself using regular sunglasses! You will require the following articles to do so:-

Materials Required

• A pair of regular sun glasses
• Red and blue lighting gels
• Cyanoacrylate base adhesive (SuperGlue, Krazy Glue, etc.)
• Soldering iron
• Welding eye shields/ goggles
• A precision knife
• A couple of 3 Volts watch batteries
• Eight high powered infrared enabled LED screens

Procedure

• First, remove the lenses of the regular goggles and trace their outlines upon the blue and red lighting gel sheets respectively, two on each sheet.
• Cut out the shapes with your precision knife.
• Fix the blue lens cutouts over the goggles' lens frames followed by the red cutouts using the adhesive.
• Replace the lenses within the goggle frame on the inside of the gel screens after the adhesive dries off.
• Attach four LED screens to the outlines of each frame of the two goggle eye-pieces using the adhesive. It should look like the lenses are enclosed within front open LED boxes.
• Power the LEDs with the watch battery by wiring the LED's to the battery. Attach the battery anywhere on the inside of the goggles.

Your night vision goggles are now ready for night-time use. In case you want to cut down on the hard work, you can also opt to buy cheap night vision goggles that may be ordered online. Another choice may be to go for some good night vision gear, binoculars and scopes at ATN Corporations and INFRARED1 who specialize and deal in a wide variety of infrared photography and night vision equipment. There, that sets you for all the nocturnal sleuthing sprees, you and your pals may want to indulge in! As long you stay out of trouble, have all the fun you want with your infrared night vision eyewear.