wow- way too big
should be literally a pinhole

That's what it is, lots of people have done this little trick.

Hole in the tube looks perfectly fine for a homebrew refocus ring to expand your depth of field without cutting light levels too much. If you're wanting to operate the unit in the daylight, that's where you'd want the pinhole instead. If you're going to be hanging your NVGs from the wall or something and they'll be getting light on them all day every day, I'd just tape up the holes with electrical tape so they were solid without the potential for light to enter the unpowered tubes.

A user on a NVG discord server this week did some experimentation to see if leaving unpowered tubes out in the sun would damage them - they didn't witness any visible damage, but I think the jury's still out on what actually happens to tubes when they're sitting in sunlight turned off. I'd still avoid it and 'run protection' when possible, especially if they're just sitting static for weeks and weeks, but that's not based on any technical understanding on my end on what the tubes actually experience - cheap insurance.

I made some burns of the image of the closed blinds on my shop window to my OMNI VII PVS-14 when I inadvertently left it turned on without the lens cap on my workbench. Nice fuzzy stripes on half the image, a good bit darker than the OP`s  .  I did the shoe box thing for a couple of days and it helped a little bit but the burns were only half as dark. What did eventually work was this routine: Shoe box  treatment for 24 hrs, turn it off for 24 hrs, install fresh batteries and use it in mixed conditions for 4 or 5 hrs, turn it off for 24 hrs, repeat. After several cycles of this the burn was almost gone, and now there is no sign that the burns were ever there.

thanks the verification. I will have to try it. Looks very affordable

Shoe box trick works but the healing process is accelerated if there is a very low level of light, not complete absolute darkness. Hard to keep it consistent and not do more damage so running it in a perfectly dark place is the safer bet.