And so it was with quite a bit of curiosity, along with some trepidation, that I slit open the little blister pack containing a 5-watt Royal Blue Side Emitter received just today from Lambda.

I mounted it on a 2C NexStar that I had already prepared for the RB's arrival, slid in a patented (not really) MR Bulk rubberized rattle-free 3x123 holder, and stood it up next to its 5-watt White SE fraternal twin fer pitcher takin':

Bet you can't guess which is which, heh heh.

But appearances can be remarkably deceiving, especially when the soft-touch clickies on their tailcaps were depressed:

BOOM! Holy Burnin' Eyeballs! It completely dominated its white-beamed brother, and after a few staring moments my eyes started to ache.

I then tried light metering it, but to my amazement the blacklight-beamed Black Needle failed to register anything. At all.

So I crept closer and closer, narrowing the original 39.37-inch measured gap until I was like six inches away, when suddenly the gauge numbers started to race upwards, and the last number I saw was in 5,000+ lux region before I shut her down.

The effects of the Royal Blue Luxeon are already well-documented in this thread by Lambda so there's no need to get into it here, but I'm sure this ghostly blue beam does something nasty to the eyes eventually, even when nothing registers on the meter.

No wonder they rate them in milliwatts; they have to warn us somehow.

The Black Needle Lives!