Try these as starters (_big_ area of the literature):
Hulburt 1951, "Time of Dark Adaptation After Stimulation by Various
Brightnesses and Colors," Journ. Optical Soc. America (JOSA), 41, 402
Smith et al. 1955, "Effects of Exposure to Various Red Lights upon
Subsequent Dark Adaptation Measured by the Method of Constant Stimuli",
JOSA 45, 502
Kinney 1955, "Sensitivity of the Eye to Spectral Radiation at Scotopic
and Mesopic Intensity Levels," JOSA 45, 507
Sweeney et al. 1960, "Season Changes in Scotopic Sensitivity," JOSA 50, 237
McCann and Benton 1969, "Interaction of the long-wave cones and the rods
to produce color sensations", JOSA 59, 103
Stabell & Stabell 1980, "Extrafoveal spectral sensitivity during dark
adaptation", JOSA 70, 81
Drum 1981, "Rod-cone interaction in the dark-adapted fovea", JOSA 71, 71
Stockman et al. 1993, "Spectral sensitivities of the human cones",
JOSA-A 10, 2491
Stabell & Stabell 1998, "Chromatic rod-cone interaction during dark-adaptation",
JOSA=A 11, 2809
As you can tell by the recent dates of the last papers, all this
dark-adaptation and color-sensitivity stuff is still very much up in the
air, since it turns out to be a very complex process. Eveident in these
recent papers is that both rods and cones work at very light levels, that
dark-adaptation takes quite awhile (one plot shows the two subjects still
gaining considerably after 50 minutes in complete darkness), and that
the color-sensitivity interaction at low light levels between rods and
cones makes the usual assummptions we make (red lights etc.) only
approximate. Some of the recent papers, however, specifically cite the
older works by Smith and others listed above as the ground-breaking work
in this area (and by implcation, still valid). These early papers, by the
way, have the sensitivity results in absolute units, which Tom Harvey was
asking about.
Roger Clark's book, "Visual Astronomy of the Deep Sky" has very
useful plots of the classic lab data by Blackwell transformed to astro-type
units (magnitudes, surface-brightness in mags/unit area), making it more
directly relevant to night-sky observing. In regard to Roger's book,
remember to look at the extensive material at Mel Bartels' Web site,
including problems with the book in terms of detection thresholds for
extended objects, and more. That's here:
http://www.efn.org/~mbartels/aa/visual.html
This includes links to Clark's revision of the book (he agrees there were
errors), to Nils Olof Carlin's simple experimental work with different
lighting, and other original stuff and links.
Digging into all this will keep you off the streets at least until
the holidays are over!
\Brian
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