hi pressure sodium and mercury top loads

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Original poster: "Laurence Davis by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <meknar-at-hotmail-dot-com>

The bulbs themselves are REALLY expensive I think. about 15bux a pop.
I have a ceramic base for using lightbulbs as top loads and I saw these
that have a 'medium base' that are exactly the same as regular bulbs.

the sodium glowed blue with hardly any streamers in the bulb and
at low power, no streamers from the bulb either. :(

the mercury one glowed a pinkish red with small 4 inch streams from the
top.  i would like to know what it looks like inside, but since I bought
the -frosted- one I dont know.  Will return it for one thats clear.  The 
top of the bulb seemed slightly warm, but I'd bet it'd get rather warm at 
full power.  I've broken bulbs before running them too long.

I took some pics, but they turned out really poor.  The digital camera I 
have doesn't take low light pictures well.  I played with photoshop
and there is enough detail to see what you need to see.  But I offer them 
in their original unedited form.

http://users.sgi-dot-net/~meknar/regbulb.jpg
http://users.sgi-dot-net/~meknar/mercurybulb.jpg
http://users.sgi-dot-net/~meknar/sodiumbulb.jpg

larry.