It's hard to explain how cool the Jasper is without actually showing it to you. My dad introduced it to me as an astronomy tool. He's an astronomy buff who's always playing with the newest star-gazing books and gadgets. While I appreciate the night sky as much as the next guy, my enthusiasm level doesn't come close to his. Not by a mile. So when he brought it out, I wasn't all that interested.

"Let's take it outside," he said.

We went out in the back yard where it was a reasonably dark and clear night. I pointed the laser towards one of the stars in the Big Dipper.

Jasper enables you to share your love of the night sky in an entirely new way.

Whoa! The beam looked like a miniature light saber that extended as far as my eye could see until it actually covered the star I was pointing towards. I spent the next 20 minutes pointing at different stars and sure enough, it worked on every single one. Then I started pointing at objects on land. There's a radio tower on top of Vineyard Mountain, which is probably about 3 miles away. The beam is clearly visible all the way to the tower, where it's punctuated by a bright green dot.

Dad explained his Jasper was 5 milli-watts, the maximum allowed by the FDA. Anything more powerful and you'll need a license. Next he told me that the human eye interprets the color green to be 50-times brighter than red. So if you had a 5mw red laser beam next to a 5mw green laser beam, the green beam would appear 50-times brighter.

"Cool! I gotta take this home. Can I borrow it?"

I took it home and used it for the next couple weeks to tease pets, point at everyday objects in conversation and just plain to impress people. It never fails. Practically everyone who sees Jasper wants to buy one.

I also used it to learn more about astronomy. My dad traced all the constellations that I'd never been able to see before, like Cassiopeia and Andromeda. This kind of info inevitably comes up whenever I show Jasper to someone. Regardless of what they know about astronomy, they all stare at the stars in amazement.

Who knew pointing could be so fun?