"Homer J. Simpson" wrote in message ...

I've been taught that white light destroys your night vision. Is this
claim true?

The major issue is INTENSITY. Keeping the light intensity down is
the key. While given the same intensity, red will hinder your night
vision less, you actually may bet away with dimmer illumination using
another color.

I actually find very dim white light to work fine. The back lighting on my
Garmin 195 actually makes a quite suitable light to read the charts by.

The military went with green because it interferes with their night vision
hardware less, but some research points out your acuity is better with
green light, meaning you can set it dimmer than you could with a red
light.