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Picked up a neato high quality low cost red/white LED headlight last week, and it turned out to be really handy when observing earlier this week.



Most lights are pretty low quality but this one has separate switches for the white and red lamps, is solidly built and is pretty fancy with an adjustable angle setup. Sells in the $12 - $15 price range and could easily sell for 3X as much.

Available lots of places including B&H Photo: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/ ... e_led.html

Pete,

I just recently purchased this one from Orion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1V3GBnNQNs . Might be a bit to bright for reading charts but it should be perfect for walking around without seriously damaging someone's night vision. I am sure I can add something to the light to defuse the brightness without affecting the sensor.

Paul, does the motion sensor get in the way? Looking just now and there are several similar designs to these red headlights and most are under $20. FWIW the Meade I've got is bright white and dim red.

Pete, The motion sensor has a very small range. I believe its about 6 - 8 inches away from the light itself. So unless you wave your hand in front of it the sensor will not detect any movement beyond 8 inches.

I do have a Brinkman head lamp that has a white/red switch but I have found in the cooler months with gloves on its difficult to find the button and I would sometimes inadvertently switch it to white light instead of red. That's why I bought the Orion motion light.

I have the same headlight that Paul has, but I haven't used it much. Even the lowest setting is like a torch once you're dark adapted, and if I'm not mistaken the motion feature only works on the bright setting. These days I'm finding that I only use headlamps for setup/breakdown. For chart reading and sketching, much less light does the trick.

Mike,

You are correct about the motion sensor only working with the brightest setting. That is why I am working on a way to defuse the light to make it less bright. I think if I paint the inner reflective surface black instead of the polished silver that it is will make it a lot less bright.

Being old school I prefer charts over tablets and phones simply because both those items contribute in my opinion to light pollution on an observing field. If I do use a tablet on the field it has so much rubylith on it that I have a hard time reading the chart.