Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Under Water Lighting

[John Brownlee <jonnie@cobweb.scarymonsters.net>]

	Candle-power (or whatever measure of luminence you prefer) is only
relevant in that it represents the total amount of light energy being produced.
A more interesting question is whether that energy will be absorbed or scattered
by water and particles in suspension, both on it's way from the lamp to the
object and back to your viewport. Remember, there's two passes through the
attenuating medium to consider when calculating losses.
	A blue-green color-temperature is really going to help. As for
scattering, that depends on a lot of parameters. I know that laser line scanners
get people around a lot of the problems with incoherent scattering, but that's
beyond the scope of lamps. :-)
	Busby waxed poetic about lamps, I believe his recommendation was
thallium iodide lamps because their attenuation was low. If you can get your
peak flux around 5000 angstroms you'll get more seeing for your watts of battery
power.

						Thanks,

-- 
							John

John Brownlee
Chief Systems Administrator
Scary Monsters Network
jonnie at scarymonsters dot net