Most powerful underwater lighting
Last updated: February 4, 2020 at 4:20 am
The most powerful lights ever used in the deep ocean were mounted on the Russian MIR 1 and MIR 2 submersibles to film The Stephen Low Company’s IMAX film Titanica in 1991. The twin lighting systems composed of HMI and quartz iodide lights powered from the submersibles’ batteries, generated the equivalent of 150,000 watts of incandescent light.
The 6,000 m (20,000 ft) depth capable Medusa, built by Phoenix International, Inc., is a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) that carries 10 high-powered, independently movable and controllable, HMI lights. Medusa can produce a total of 12,000 watts of illumination. It was suspended over the wreck of the RMS Titanic for the making of James Cameron’s Ghosts of the Abyss in 2001.
The Stephen Low Company
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Jeffrey Gallant is the Editor-in-Chief and Records Keeper of the Diving Almanac. He is also a contributing editor of DIVER Magazine, and the scientific director of the Greenland Shark and Elasmobranch Education and Research Group (GEERG). Jeffrey started diving in 1982.
