Just found out that birds see in ultraviolet.
I have zero idea what ultraviolet is or even what that means other than UV rays but that means nothing to me.
It seems like it would be easier to spot birds in trees or fields if I could see in ultraviolet maybe similar to how we have heat cameras or night vision goggles.
Is there an ultraviolet camera or scope or something similar?
In: Biology
The electromagnetic spectrum is an infinitely large range of frequencies, a small slice of which includes our visible light frequencies. https://www.miniphysics.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/electromagneticspectrum.jpg
Now, just a bit further along toward the red end of the spectrum is infra red, and in the other direction – just beyond the blues and violets of the visible spectrum we have ultraviolet. If you keep going in that direction you hit X ray and gamma ray frequencies. If you continue past infra red you start hitting microwave and radio frequencies.
The cone cells in your eyes are tuned to detect visible wavelengths (that’s what defines them as visible!). But other detectors can detect at other frequencies – we know that, because we frequently send and receive radio signals, we use X-rays toimage broken bones, and we rely on microwaves being absorbed by water to heat our food in microwave ovens. The vision detectors in other species can be sensitive to other frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum, so they ahve different visible ranges. This often includes vision in the UV range.
We can certainly (and do!) build detectors that allow us to visualise the UV part of the spectrum. In fact the landsat earth observation missions have a detector specifically for observing that part of the spectrum – band 1 in the illustration here https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/sites/landsat/files/2016/10/all_Landsat_bands.png
There’s also lots of good scientific applications for observing UV – for example we can use UV markers to track the growth or motion of things. A quick google will reveal a wide array of UV cameras.
Of course, the only way we can visualise it is by transcribing the UV light into our visible spectrum. So, for example, in the image below they have mapped the UV image to “yellow” on the left hand image. What you’re seeing as yellow, a bee would see as UV.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/yVDi4GVdj0w/maxresdefault.jpg
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