Full disclosure: Wuben sent me this X5 for free. I'm not really a flashlight collector, but after seeing that fluorescent porcupine posted here a while ago, l really wanted to play around with UV.
Since then I've basically been walking around shining
UV at everything.
Yellow wall lichen (Xanthoria parietina) might be my favorite so far. It turns ridiculously orange under UV. l've also actually used the light for nighttime cleanups
– finding certain bits of trash with UV is surprisingly fun.
I made one tiny modification and stuck an optical filter over the UV light because there was a bit too much visible light coming through for photos. Makes the fluorescence look much cleaner.
The laser is fun too. I was hoping I could use it as a proper astronomy pointer, and under really good conditions you can actually see the beam in the sky (second photo), but most of the time it's a little too weak.
If that thing looked like a lightsaber too, it would basically be the perfect toy.
Anyway, for those of you who have UV lights: what are the coolest things you've found in nature that fluoresce? I'm genuinely looking for more stuff to hunt for.
I found a few more weird ones and ended up cutting the whole thing into a little video because | was having way too much fun with it. Happy to link it if anyone's interested.
by Coffee81379