# How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce



## Ginseng

Just wondering...exactly how bright IS the sun? I mean compared to an ARC LS or Megaclops.

Wilkey


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## desmondpun

http://library.thinkquest.org/J002809/sun4.html


380000000000000000000000000 Watt


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## PhotonBoy

... or about 130 watts per square foot


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## PaulW

. . . at a distance of 93 million miles


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## Floating Spots

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


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## Ginseng

Hehe,

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

Wilkey


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## PhotonBoy

*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."


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## Rothrandir

*Re: How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce?*

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


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## PaulW

*Re: How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce?*

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


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## BuddTX

*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!


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## shiftd

*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"


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## Rothrandir

*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


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## highlandsun

*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.


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## Empath

*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.


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## Mednanu

*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)


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## Daekar

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.


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## nerdgineer

*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...


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## JanCPF

*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


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## 2xTrinity

> 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.


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## IMSabbel

Nah, the hypernove will emit most of the energy as neutrinos (just like normal novas), so we will never see it...


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## TITAN1833

Wow! the ultimate throw monster,but not quite a pocket rocket!!!


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## flashburn72

Black hole shrunk down to hand held size. with quantum singularity or stable worm hole in the center. then you could could suck in all the available light in certain galaxy's and put it out the front of your hand held light.. 
Although gravity would b a problem..you may spontaneusly occupy every point and place in time in the known universe. but then everybody would get to c your light.
Just throwin around idea's


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## petersmith6

just think if the clip you would need to EDC it..and can it have the cree version


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## Ra

The sun is yellow because of the absorbtion in the atmosphere: It absorbs more blue than red.. Thats why the sun becomes red when its about to set..


Regards,

Ra.


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## 2xTrinity

Ra said:


> The sun is yellow because of the absorbtion in the atmosphere: It absorbs more blue than red.. Thats why the sun becomes red when its about to set..
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Ra.


The sun does look yellow though due to the brain's ability to white-balance, in contrast with the bluer sky. However, if the sun is compared to artificial light sources, it is almost always "cooler". At most times of the day, for example, even "cool white" fluorescent lamps that are on either outside, or near a window, look yellowish compared to their surroundings. Incan lamps are a very strong "peach" color when visible in broad daylight.


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## EricB

So if the sun is really that white, what are "white" stars (like white dwarfs), then? Are they really bluish, and therefore appear to us "whiter" than the sun? I have heard that "blue" stars are the color of the highest color temperature LED's.


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## 2xTrinity

EricB said:


> So if the sun is really that white, what are "white" stars (like white dwarfs), then?
> White dwarfs I believe are similar to our sun in color, the difference is that Are they really bluish, and therefore appear to us "whiter" than the sun? I have heard that "blue" stars are the color of the highest color temperature LED's.


Here is a wikipedia on the classification of stars, including one by temperature. According to the chart "white" stars would actually appear significantly bluish, and "blue" stars emit mostly UV.

I think one thing about the sun is that most people generally only look at it right before it is about to set, which is when it appears orange due to it passing through so much of the atmosphere.


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## Illum

> *How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce*



until we have an integrating sphere of that magnitude, the world will never know the true number


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## UncleFester

How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce????
The answer is easy...... *ALL* of 'em !!! ( paraphrase from Terminator II)


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## RipplesOfLife

Hm...,

1. How big is the sun?
-It is much bigger than earth.

2. How bright is the sun?
-Very bright.

3. Can we produce light that is as bright, or brighter than the sun?
-Sure, why not?
-But..., I think no matter how bright of a light we can produce, it can hardly surpass what the sun does, and that is light up half the earth. And remember, only a tiny portion of the sun's light hits us (I think that's true).

Imagine if there was a reflector behind the sun... Now that would a bright flashlight.


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## rizky_p

RipplesOfLife said:


> Hm...,
> 
> 3. Can we produce light that is as bright, or brighter than the sun?
> .




Hell yeah, get lots of hydrogen and then star the fusion reaction somehow maybe with super powerfull laser with bilions of watss. :devil:


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## Illum

its interesting how the question to this day still brings threads to the forum....:laughing:

did a search and found two previous threads on the same topic, one in 2004 the second in 2006 
*How many lux or lumens is the Sun?*
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/...ad.php?t=43901
*how many lumens does the sun put out???*
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/...d.php?t=105333


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## Oznog

*Re: How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce?*



BuddTX said:


> 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!



I'm not happy with the quality of light from this sun, it's too far into the yellow range. I prefer a warm white or at least a cool white, do you have any info on when the sun will offer those options? I don't know what their marketing people are thinking only coming out with a yellow-white and trying to stick with it for like _billions_ of years.


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## Ra

*Re: How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce?*



Oznog said:


> I'm not happy with the quality of light from this sun, it's too far into the yellow range. I prefer a warm white or at least a cool white, do you have any info on when the sun will offer those options? I don't know what their marketing people are thinking only coming out with a yellow-white and trying to stick with it for like _billions_ of years.



The sun is quite yellow because of the blue-absorbing atmosphere, the blue light is scattered all over the sky! The more atmosphere between you and the sun, the more red the sun will be, like close to sunset or just after sunrise..

Klimb the Mount Everest on a sunny summers-day: You'll find a much, much whiter sun up there!!


Best,

Ra.


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## Torchguy

*Re: How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce?*

Forgive me for resurrecting an old thread, but. . . I'm trying to find out whether the latest LEDs approach, or surpass, the brightness of the sun for the equivalent surface area? 

Some of the current LEDs like the XHP35 are producing ridiculous amounts of light (around 2,600 lumens) considering how tiny their area is - does this come close to the equivalent surface area of the sun?

TIA


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## maukka

*Re: How Many Lumens Does the Sun Produce?*

Sun's illuminance on earth reaches about 100k lux. That's easily achievable with powerful thrower (>500k cd) from 2 meters away.


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