Is it possible to have night vision from a single lens?

Question

to be a little more specific, simply one lens or pane like a window or visor, without any other device attached.

Answer 1

I would agree with physcia.  I can't tell from your question exactly what you're asking, so let me add another caveat or two.  

There was this Chuck Norris movie once, where he had this pair of red goggles that acted like night vision goggles when he put them on.  It was due to some "high-tech" lens or coating that was on the goggles.  To passively create night vision for a human with any lens or combination of lenses is impossible.  Night vision goggles require at least one lens to focus, but they also require an electronic light amplification tube.  So yes, one lens, but also an electronic device behind it.  

You can use binoculars or a telescope to gather more light than your eyes could alone, but this also magnifies as well as well as collects light, so that the total surface brightness or light density of what you are looking at does not change.  In other words, binoculars can make things look bigger, but cannot make things look brighter.  The brightness is a function of the exit pupil of the binocular or telescope device, and the highest brightness possible occurs when the exit pupil is the same size as a human pupil, or about 7mm diameter.  Since the exit pupil is the lens diameter divided by the magnification, there is no possible way to create a zero power binocular that just amplifies light--any attempt will just make an exit pupil bigger than a human pupil, which will waste light.  Case in point, the ubiquitous 7x50 binocular.  The exit pupil is 50/7=7.1mm.  You will never see a 5x50 binocular, because it wastes the exit pupil--it doesn't make the image brighter.  The only choice would be to redesign the human eye, like use an owl or cat eye or something.  

Anyone who tries to magnify light to a higher surface brightness with a collection of lenses and without augmenting it with an electronically-amplified mechanism (night vision for example), is actually trying to break the second law of thermodynamics, i.e. it will not be done any more than a perpetual machine can be built.

Edit:

Just to summarize, it is impossible to have some sort of lens or visor that gives you "night vision".  You can buy yellow-shaded glasses that claim to improve your vision in low light, but my guess is that this is mostly a scam.  The yellow just makes it seem brighter, but you can't actually discern more detail.  You need that electronic device to amplify light.  Otherwise, you are breaking laws of physics to amplify or concentrate an energy source without using additional energy.   And to my knowledge, only Chuck Norris is allowed to break the laws of physics.

Answer 2

Yes.

Because it is such a short question, it is not possible to offer a longer answer.  Do you mean with a single eye lens, or a single telescope lens?  The answer is "yes" in both cases, mind.

In an eye, night vision is determined by the retina and iris.  Large iris is necessary to admit as much light as possible,  and the retina needs a large amount of opsin to register the light that is available.

In a telescope (or similar device) a large iris is still needed as is a large collecting lens.  In night vision devices, the light is then amplified electronically.  A single lens will do as well as a binocular arrangement.