Maybe it would be possible to pump a standing wave dye with a telescope using a single mode fiber to couple the moving telescope with the laser?
Building a small N2-laser or using flashlamps for pumping a self made pulsed dye laser should be possible. In two resent papers in the journal: Review of Scientific Instruments, bright blue LEDs have been used as pulsed UV sources which might be useful as a pumping source. (From: Joshua Halpern (jbh@IDT.NET).) The strongest lines from the mercury vapor lamp are in the UV (the intercombination 253 nm line, and if you contact the lamp directly to the dye cuvette, the resonance 186 nm line. By the way it is the latter which photodissociates oxygen leading to the formation of ozone that you should be smelling if you operate this lamp in the air). These emissions have a high enough energy to break R6G apart. That is a bad idea if you want to build a dye laser. The peak of the R6G absorption is in the green. You would be better off with a strong green or white light, with a UV filter on it. You would also have to have a huge CW lamp. AFAIK, it has not been done, but rather one uses Ar-ion la
