"Jose" wrote in message

0.005 Watt. So it will "flood" your cockpit with a lot less light than
your LED headlight.

This may be true but a laser straight out of the box is pretty focused,
and put a simple lens in front of it and you can keep the beam even
tighter.

Not really. You can use a beam telescope to help a bit. But the problem is
more one of diffusion by the atmosphere than divergence.

There may not be that many photons involved, but they are all coming from
the same direction, and that does count for something.

I assume you mean directed at the same point. In this case, light is acting
like a bunch of particles. It would be the same from a flashlight though.

(somebody posted about a five digree divergence, the lasers I've seen are
all much tighter than that.)

Much. 1 millirad


moo