Tuesday, April 21, 2009

What is Infrared

Have you ever been using a piece of equipment, seen infrared on the device and wondered what is infrared, what function it serves, and how is it used in a device?

First what is Infrared? Infrared is a type light energy or radiation Infrared (IR) radiation is electromagnetic radiation whose wavelength is longer than that of visible light (400-700 nm), but shorter than that of terahertz radiation (100 µm - 1mm) and microwaves (~30,000 µm). Infrared radiation spans roughly three orders of magnitude.

Direct sunlight has a luminous efficacy of about 93 lumens per watt of radiant flux, which includes infrared (47% share of the spectrum), visible (46%), and ultra-violet (only 6%) light. Bright sunlight provides luminance of approximately 100,000 candela per square meter at the Earth's surface.

Infrared imaging is used extensively for both military and civilian purposes. Military applications include target acquisition, surveillance, night vision, homing and tracking. Non-military uses include thermal efficiency analysis, remote temperature sensing, spectroscopy, and weather forecasting.

Infrared astronomy uses sensor-equipped telescopes to penetrate dusty regions of space, such as gasses, nebula's, and particle clouds; detects cool objects such as planets or hot objects like a star, infrared also used to view highly red-shifted objects from the early days of the universe.

The most common use is of infrared is in everyday communication, short-ranged wireless communication like your TV remote or wireless keyboard and mouse for your computer. When you unlock your car doors via remote; an infrared signal is transmitted from you key chain to a receiver in your car that tells the doors or trunk to unlock.

ICI uses infrared sensing technology in our cameras to view the infrared spectrum in many different palettes So the object in view can be viewed from many different modes. Our cameras are used in thermal building inspections, security surveillance, industrial inspection/monitoring, thermal mammography, wildlife observation/tracking, commercial, residential, military; the list of applications are limitless.


Keith Dartez

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