Night-Vision Preserving Kestrel Meters

The Kestrel NV series designed specifically for military personnel and pilots flying in darkness to preserve their night vision.  Kestrel NV models have a night-vision preserving backlight which helps users to sustain natural night vision. The Kestrel NV's backlight incorporates an optical filter to reduce overall brightness and minimize blue and green spectrum light to preserve night vision. Additionally, the Kestrel NV backlights are also much dimmer than a standard backlight, making it more difficult to detect with the naked eye in night operations. This backlight appears soft greyish pink, not red, and is still in the visible spectrum, so is not compatible with night-vision equipment.  It takes 30 to 45 minutes for the average eye to adapt to darkness and maximize night vision. Even a short burst of white, yellow, green or blue light “bleaches out” the rod cell photoreceptors in the eye and causes night blindness until the entire adaptation process can take place again. Light in the red spectrum does not cause this “bleaching out”, preventing night blindness and night vision fatigue.

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