How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce

Ginseng

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Feb 27, 2003
Messages
3,734
Just wondering...exactly how bright IS the sun? I mean compared to an ARC LS or Megaclops.

Wilkey
 

Floating Spots

Enlightened
Joined
Aug 7, 2002
Messages
667
Location
Elkhart, IN
The 1 Watt LS is ~18 lumens per watt, so 6840000000000000000000000000 lumens....
If you can put something equivalent in a portable flashlight, I'll give you a dollar.
Of course, the battery runtimes would be horrible.
/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/twak.gif
 

Ginseng

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Feb 27, 2003
Messages
3,734
Hehe,

I thought the answer would be something incredible. That's a lot of photons!

Wilkey
 

PhotonBoy

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Mar 11, 2003
Messages
3,304
Location
Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, Canada http://tinyu
Re: How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce?

Want bright? Try a hypernova.

http://www.physics.lsa.umich.edu/nea/news/articles/April03/upi.htm

"During the first minute after the explosion it emitted energy at a rate more than a million times the combined output of all the stars in the Milky Way... If you concentrated all the energy that the sun will put out over its entire 9-billion-year life into a tenth of a second, then you would have some idea of the brightness," Ashley said."
 

Rothrandir

Flashaholic
Joined
Aug 17, 2002
Messages
7,795
Location
US
Re: How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce?

wow! better have good sunglasses when you look into that! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif
 

PaulW

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Mar 23, 2003
Messages
2,060
Location
Laurel, Maryland
Re: How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce?

Always wear sunglasses. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 

BuddTX

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Nov 27, 2001
Messages
2,521
Location
Houston, TX
Re: How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce?

Yea, but just look at how YELLOW the SUN is!

I will wait for the LED version to come out, now THAT will be bright!
 

shiftd

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Nov 17, 2002
Messages
2,261
Location
CA
Re: How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce?

NOOOO
I like the sun "warm." Who want to be "cool" anyway /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

A more serious, yet unrelated and out of question argument:
If the sun came from led, where the heatsinking goes? The sun were like a big bulb that heat transfer made via radiating the heat to us. If it were from led, we gonna be "bye bye"
 

Rothrandir

Flashaholic
Joined
Aug 17, 2002
Messages
7,795
Location
US
Re: How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce?

would the vacuum of space suck the heat out?

it's pretty cold out there as it is...but that's a lot of heat when you overdrive a 5w luxeon to be as bright as the sun /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif
 

highlandsun

Enlightened
Joined
Aug 11, 2002
Messages
607
Location
Los Angeles, CA
Re: How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce?

vacuum is an insulator.... heat transfer would have to be through physical matter being ejected, carrying some heat with it.
 

Empath

Flashaholic
Joined
Nov 11, 2001
Messages
8,508
Location
Oregon
Re: How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce?

Heat is transfered by conduction, convection or radiation. Conduction is the propogation of energy through a material medium, of which is in very limited amounts from the sun to the earth. Convection is the actual mixing of the heated materials with other materials, like a virtual mixing bowl. Again, and thankfully, we don't share that material with the sun. Radiation is the propogation of energy through a particles or waves. With the sun, we receive electromagnetic waves, which results in heat and other forms or released energy as the those waves, such as light, react with everything that absorbs them.
 

Mednanu

Enlightened
Joined
Feb 16, 2003
Messages
333
Location
Earth...
Re: How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce?

What BIN code is the SUN from ? I'm not going to buy one unless I can get a good BIN code ! I'm sick of all these pea green suns with high Vf's.......(chuckle)
 

Daekar

Enlightened
Joined
Mar 23, 2007
Messages
837
Location
Virginia, USA
LOL I love this forum! I was going to ask this specific question and decided to google it first.... what's the first hit when you type in "How many lumens is the sun?" Yep, right here.
 

nerdgineer

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
May 7, 2004
Messages
2,778
Location
Southern California
Re: How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce?

BuddTX said:
Yea, but just look at how YELLOW the SUN is...
It's yellow in the pictures they paint for books, or when it's low in the sky, but sunlight's actual color temperature is about 5800 degrees K, an almost perfect white.

I thank that's because we evoloved under it, so our eyes are optimized to see it as a perfect white...
 

JanCPF

Enlightened
Joined
Oct 17, 2003
Messages
846
Location
Denmark
Re: How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce?

nerdgineer said:
It's yellow in the pictures they paint for books, or when it's low in the sky, but sunlight's actual color temperature is about 5800 degrees K, an almost perfect white.

I thank that's because we evoloved under it, so our eyes are optimized to see it as a perfect white...
Precisely! - Right on. It's funny how most people think the light from the sun is yellow, and then you shine an incan light and an LED light onto a piece white paper in full sunshine showing how the LED is colorless and the incan is yellow. The reason the sun "looks" yellow is probably because of the blue sky that surrounds it. Human eye "white balance control" at the works here.

Jan
 
Last edited:

2xTrinity

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Dec 10, 2006
Messages
2,386
Location
California
The 1 Watt LS is ~18 lumens per watt, so 6840000000000000000000000000 lumens....
If you can put something equivalent in a portable flashlight, I'll give you a dollar.
The spectral output of the sun is closer to 100 lumens per watt -- most blackbody radiators that we are used to (incandescent lamps, for example) operate at a fairly low temperature, so the "peak" wavelength is usually in the infrared -- this means that only a small fraction of the energy is released as visible light, usually with an efficiacy of around 10-25 lumens per watt for incandescent. In the case of the sun though, its surface temperature is about 5700K, which means that the "peak" wavelength is actually in the green portion of the spectrum -- which coincides with the eye's sensitivity peak. If a filament material existed that would operate at 5700k, we could have incan lamps with 100 lm/W efficicacy, and perfect color rendering. (don't count on it -- tungtsen is already the metal with the highest melting point, around 3400k, and running it near that point results in very very short life).

Precisely! - Right on. It's funny how most people think the light from the sun is yellow, and then you shine an incan light and an LED light onto a piece white paper in full sunshine showing how the LED is colorless and the incan is yellow. The reason the sun "looks" yellow is probably because of the blue sky that surrounds it. Human eye "white balance control" at the works here.
Yep, most people consider the sun to be "yellow" and the moon to be more "blue", when in fact that moon is a poor reflector of blue light, so its apparent color temperature is actually lower (more yellow) at about 4000k. I suppose it does look bluish though compared to the typical high pressure sodium lamps (1900K) most people have to compare it to...

Want bright? Try a hypernova.
A hypernova is going to emit all of its energy as high intensity gamma rays, so considering it "bright" is somewhat of a misnomer -- the only way we've been able to "see" them is that the gamma rays sometimes hit something else, which in turn re-emits light in the visible range.
 

IMSabbel

Enlightened
Joined
Dec 4, 2004
Messages
921
Nah, the hypernove will emit most of the energy as neutrinos (just like normal novas), so we will never see it...
 
Top