Night sight with illuminated aiming point

Abstract

There is disclosed a weapon sight for night time use having an image intensifier tube and an illuminated aiming dot. A front lens forms an image of a dimly lit scene onto the input surface of an image intensifier tube. A resulting intensified image is displayed at an output surface of the tube. A rear lens then projects this image to a viewer. A light source illuminates an aiming dot which is optically relayed by a beam combiner mirror through the rear lens to the viewer so that the images of the aiming dot and scene are superimposed. Mechanical means are provided for moving the aiming dot in elevation and windage. In a specific embodiment of the invention, the light source is a light emitting diode (LED) which illuminates an input end of a short length of fine diameter optical fiber, the output end of which forms the aiming dot. Alternatively, the aiming dot can be a small aperture within an opaque disk mounted adjacent the LED. The red color of the output light of the LED is selected to contrast with the yellow-green color of the intensifier tube output image. The viewer thus sees a small, brightly illuminated high color contrast red aiming point against the yellow-green image of the viewed scene.