Post your pics of night sights at nighttime! See post!

Mine are 13 years old and very dim. It would have to be a time exposure to show up.

I'm curious as well, never had or have seen night sights before, finding a video of them in action or pictures is impossible. Then again, so is taking pictures in the dark with a digital camera...

Well here are the night sights on my PX4, but alas they are not different colors so I doubt this will be much help to you.

Hard to take this, holding the gun in the right hand and the camera in the left, but FWIW:

Hrmmm, 45 minutes and no responses. (Well, no pics anyway)

I postulate 1 of 2 things right now:

1) THR members are scrambling to get their digital cameras and night sights in the same room, upload, and post.

2) Everyone who has both night sights and a digital camera has gone to bed.

I, too, am interested in some pics. I'm waiting for my CCW and saving for a carry gun, and am interested in getting night sights.

Crap! I type too slow.

So tell me nwilliams, 230RN, was I right with #1?

Oh, sorry, that was one of my cat, Jet.

So tell me nwilliams, 230RN, was I right with #1?

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Could very well be, I just happened to have a picture of the night sights for my PX4 but there could be a flood of pics coming soon. Maybe tomorrow there will be more pics posted it is late in some parts of the country right now.

Maybe tomorrow there will be more pics posted it is late in some parts of the country right now.

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Yeah, I expect there will be. I just figured since so much time had gone by, no one had pics with night sights sitting on their hard drives. I got this crazy image in my head of THR members everywhere jumping up from their computers going for their guns/cameras, thinking "Woohoo! Chances to post more gun pr0n!1!!!11!!!eleven!"

Don't ask me, as you said, it's late here.

Well I have green night sights. I will post a set of XS Big dot on my sig229, they are my newest. So hopefully I can get good shots. Sorry no color differences. Holding guns for pictures is now use number 6 for the sand bags I lug to the range.

With the XS sights, do you set the front bead on top of the rear post in night shooting, and does that correlate well with setting the front bead in the bottom of the shallow V of the rear sight?

Dot the "I"

Dot the I does not provide enough information. When I am writing, the dot is above the vertical line, and that separation distance is variable. The XS sight has a very large dot, and a very short line (looks to be smaller than the diameter of the dot). So, does the dot rest on the top of the vertical line, is there some separation distance, or does the line overlap the dot by some amount? How does that correlate to the dot in the V for daytime use?

Maybe a dumb question, seeing as I have no knowledge about night sights, but how exactly are the sights illuminated/powered?

Usually they use a reflective paint or a phosphor paint, which will both emit a little light. The better (and more expensive) night sights will use little vials filled with tritium. Tritium is an isotope of hydrogen. It is mildly radioactive and emits electrons (Beta decay). These electrons (or in some cases positrons) interact with phosphors in the vial, which causes the phosphors to emit a dull green glow. This is the same way that phosphor paint works, except that the paint uses electrons from the environment, which makes phosphor paint less bright.

Maybe a dumb question, seeing as I have no knowledge about night sights, but how exactly are the sights illuminated/powered?

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Fairy Dust and Magic...





j/k

Tritium is what was used on the front sight post of my M16A1 when I was in the Army. It would have to be "charged" by exposing it to white light for a while before using. My memory is a little vague but I seem to recall that 1 hour of white light exposure = 4 hours of "run" time on the sight.

but how exactly are the sights illuminated/powered?

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The souls of antis long gone were harnessed for good

It's a radioactive compound/element, I believe. See Tritium

but how exactly are the sights illuminated/powered?

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Beta radiation given off during tritium decay process activates phosphors coating the inside of the glass vial, giving off light.

I made some "poor man's" night sights using europium doped strontium aluminate paint I bought off of unitednuclear.com($10/4 oz, and 4 oz is enough for 100's of sights), it's visible for about 7-10 hours after it's fully charged it if it's pitch black out(I diluted it a little because it was too bright at first).

Hmmm, someone drained the camera's battery, maybe latter.

Tritium sights do not need to be "charged" by shining a light on them. The decaying tritium atoms provide the energy to the phosphorous to make it glow.

Phosphorous paint will glow, but only for a short time after being exposed to light. The light "charges" the phosphorous paint, which can then re-emit the light for a while. Essentially, the tritium decay is continually "charging" the phosphorous paint, and letting it glow continuously.

Dot the I does not provide enough information. When I am writing, the dot is above the vertical line, and that separation distance is variable. The XS sight has a very large dot, and a very short line (looks to be smaller than the diameter of the dot). So, does the dot rest on the top of the vertical line, is there some separation distance, or does the line overlap the dot by some amount? How does that correlate to the dot in the V for daytime use?

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Hopefully you won't be shooting very long distances at night. Not to be sarcastic, but if shooting at night, it'll probably be up close, and a complete and proper sight picture may take to long to prevent "ventallation".

Shoot it in the day time to determine POI vs. POA

As an adjunct to this thread... how do you black out those annoying dots and other junk on your sights? I have used Magic Marker but it wears off quickly. On some the "dots" were below the surface and a little black paint on a toothpick took care of them.

My personal preference is for "Black-on-Black" sights. Others may like and do well with dots/bars etc. but I have always found them distracting.

The question of the usefulness of Night Sights also something I am not convinced about... If it is so dark that you cannot see your sights how do you identify your target? And if the target is illuminated enough to see, your black sights should show plainly. Having done and supervised many "house clearing drills" in the dark I am not at all sure that night sights are helpful.

A light on a gun usually only lights what is in front of it. Night sights help with this as well as the fact that making out bad guy shapes is much easier than finding little black front sights. Not to mention that some of the ,um, more mature members of this bored may have lost some of their vision and night sights help them focus on target.

The question of the usefulness of Night Sights also something I am not convinced about... If it is so dark that you cannot see your sights how do you identify your target? And if the target is illuminated enough to see, your black sights should show plainly. Having done and supervised many "house clearing drills" in the dark I am not at all sure that night sights are helpful.

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I don't know about this. I went out a couple days ago to shoot an opossum that was fighting my cat. The all black sights were useless until I figured out how to manipulate my flashlight to light them up. The target had enough light on it to be clearly identified but the sights were near impossible to see. But this is a preference issue, and I can see how nights sights could be distractring or just annoying, especially during daytime.

how do you black out those annoying dots and other junk on your sights?

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Nail polish should work to cover up your night sights longer than magic marker but not quite as permanently as paint (in case you need to remove it to sell the gun).