# How many lux or lumens is the Sun?



## VMamie

Just wondering.

Anyone knows?


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## evan9162

Easy

Once we know how bright the sun is in lux directly overhead, we can use that number to figure the lumens (since the sun radiates more or less equally in all directions.

Digging around, I found that bright sunlight is 50K-100K lux. Let's go halvies on that, and say 75K lux.

That answers one of your questions.

Now, lux is defined as lumens per square meter. So, we are measuring 75,000 lumens per square meter at the Earth's surface. All we have to do is find the number of square meters on the surface of a sphere with a radius equal to the Earth's distance from the sun.

The Earth is about 150 million km from the sun (150 billion meters). The formula for the area of a sphere of radius r is 4(pi)r^2.

Thus, the sphere has a surface area of 4(pi)(150x10^9)^2 = 2.83*10^23 square meters.

Multiply that by the lux value from before (75,000 lux = 75,000 lumens/m^2) and we get 2.12x10^28 lumens.


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## kongfuchicken

me not understand /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thinking.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif
/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/bowdown.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/bowdown.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/bowdown.gif


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## VMamie

LOL!

OK. How about lumens at the surface of the sun!!!


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## evan9162

Easy enough...

The sun's diameter is 1.4 million km, so the radius is 700,000 KM (or 700 million meters). Taking the above formula for surface of a sphere, and the sun's surface area is 6.2x10^18 meters.

Dividing the above luminous output by the surface area gives 3.4 billion lumens per square meter.


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## Kiessling

... and still not taking into account the losses in earth's atmosphere ... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif


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## Negeltu

For those who don't know... lol 

2.12x10^28 lumens 

this is scientific notation... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif an easier way to express really large or really small numbers..


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## IlluminatingBikr

[ QUOTE ]
*Negeltu said:*
For those who don't know... lol 

2.12x10^28 lumens 

this is scientific notation... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif an easier way to express really large or really small numbers.. 

[/ QUOTE ]

2.12x10^28 lumens aka 21,200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 lumens! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/faint.gif


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## evan9162

[ QUOTE ]
*Kiessling said:*
... and still not taking into account the losses in earth's atmosphere ... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif 

[/ QUOTE ]

True - how much loss would you say it accounts for? I'm sure that my calculation is well within one order of magnitude.


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## Kiessling

absolutely no idea, I only wanted to add a smart-*** reply /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
anyway, it is pretty impressing, this little yellow thing that hangs in the sky... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif ... a fusion lamp ...
cool math evan! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif
bernhard


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## Doug S

[ QUOTE ]
*evan9162 said:*
[ QUOTE ]
*Kiessling said:*
... and still not taking into account the losses in earth's atmosphere ... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif 

[/ QUOTE ]

True - how much loss would you say it accounts for? I'm sure that my calculation is well within one order of magnitude. 

[/ QUOTE ]
I would say *well* within an order of magnitude. I have a referance that addresses the atmospheric absorbtion question. As you would expect, it varies a bit across the spectrum but it appears that the incoming flux is about 55% higher above the atmosphere than at sea level with the sun overhead.


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## kongfuchicken

Yep! impressive /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif


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## evan9162

Thanks for the info, Doug.

So taking into account atmospheric losses, we can round and say around 3x10^28 lumens.


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## BuddTX

Zero Lux, but only at night!


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## ESD

[ QUOTE ]
*Doug S said:*
[ QUOTE ]
*evan9162 said:*
[ QUOTE ]
*Kiessling said:*
... and still not taking into account the losses in earth's atmosphere ... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif 

[/ QUOTE ]

True - how much loss would you say it accounts for? I'm sure that my calculation is well within one order of magnitude. 

[/ QUOTE ]
I would say *well* within an order of magnitude. I have a referance that addresses the atmospheric absorbtion question. As you would expect, it varies a bit across the spectrum but it appears that the incoming flux is about 55% higher above the atmosphere than at sea level with the sun overhead. 

[/ QUOTE ]

As I recall from some photoelectric work, at sea level, when the sun is directly overhead, you get about 1 kilowatt per square meter of irradiation. In space, as far away from the sun as earth orbits you get about 1.7KW. So 55% is certainly close enough. Obviously, this varies with clouds, smoke, smog, fog, dust, humidity and don't forget ALTITUDE.


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## The_LED_Museum

To get an accurate lumen value, one would have to construct an integrating sphere in space around the sun (a Dyson sphere with a pure flat white interior), taking into account the planets and other objects in orbit around the sun. Until that happens though, one would have to extrapolate the lumen value based upon a very small area of flat illuminated surface from a known distance from the sun.


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## Doug S

[ QUOTE ]
*ESD said:*
As I recall from some photoelectric work, at sea level, when the sun is directly overhead, you get about 1 kilowatt per square meter of irradiation. In space, as far away from the sun as earth orbits you get about 1.7KW. So 55% is certainly close enough. Obviously, this varies with clouds, smoke, smog, fog, dust, humidity and don't forget ALTITUDE. 

[/ QUOTE ]
I believe that your 1KW and 1.7KW figures apply to total solar radiation. Since the original question was about lux and lumens which apply only to light, not total radiation, I looked at only the 400-700nm portion of the solar spectrum to get that 55% figure.


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## Frenchyled

For the Lux measurement, you want to know the value about which distance? At one meter /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinser2.gif
or such as read by a luxmeter on earth /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/yellowlaugh.gif


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## udaman

[ QUOTE ]
*evan9162 said:*

Easy

Once we know how bright the sun is in lux directly overhead, we can use that number to figure the lumens (since the sun radiates more or less equally in all directions.

Digging around, I found that bright sunlight is 50K-100K lux. Let's go halvies on that, and say 75K lux.

That answers one of your questions.

Now, lux is defined as lumens per square meter. So, we are measuring 75,000 lumens per square meter at the Earth's surface. All we have to do is find the number of square meters on the surface of a sphere with a radius equal to the Earth's distance from the sun.

The Earth is about 150 million km from the sun (150 billion meters). The formula for the area of a sphere of radius r is 4(pi)r^2.

Thus, the sphere has a surface area of 4(pi)(150x10^9)^2 = 2.83*10^23 square meters.

Multiply that by the lux value from before (75,000 lux = 75,000 lumens/m^2) and we get 2.12x10^28 lumens. 

[/ QUOTE ]


Yes....but,

Digging around some more, for what is more applicable to us down on earth, and more specifically how we rate incident light from the flashlights we use, for comparison; noon daylight reaching the surface of the earth at the equator(relatively constant throughout the year), after being filtered by the atmosphere we get around only 10,000-12,000 fc(lumens/f-sq'd) and full moon only about 0.02 fc. So turning your Aurora or simliar very high output lights, and shining directly into your eye's is like looking at the sun, you'll go blind!

Keep these 'toys', like a loaded gun, away from children.


PDF link: Units of measure(pdf) 

HTML conversion link:
Units of measure HTML(usual number of formatting errors in conversion) /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif


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## scaredofthedark

*how many lumens does the sun put out???*

so how many lumens does the sun put out?
any way to calculate that?


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## Amonra

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*

that should be relatively easy.......just pop it into an integrating sphere


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## eluminator

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*

Lumens isn't everything. Reliability has to be considered also. The sun only shines in the daytime, when you don't need it. 

By the way shouldn't we be using candle power, not lumens, in this forum?


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## jtr1962

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*

Working backwards a little, the sun's _total_ output without the earth's atmosphere in the way is about 1350 W/m². About half that is visible light, and the luminous efficacy of the solar spectrum is about 199 lm/W, so we get roughly 135,000 lumens/m². At the distance of the earth's orbit this energy falls on an imaginary sphere with a radius of 150 million kilometers, or 1.5 x 10^11 meters. The surface area of this sphere is 4*pi*r², or 2.827 x 10^23. Multiplying this by 135,000 lumens per m² gives us 3.816 x10^28 lumens, or put another way 38,160 trillion trillion lumens. Of course, this is an approximation, but it gives you some idea of the order of magnitude we're talking about here.

I heard the next release from Luxeon is going to have a similar output.


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## LuxLuthor

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*



jtr1962 said:


> or put another way 38,160 trillion trillion lumens. Of course, this is an approximation, but it gives you some idea of the order of magnitude we're talking about here.


 
I would have expected much higher.


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## dbedit

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*

So jtr1962 what your really saying is just a bit less than my NLS huh


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## PoliceScannerMan

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*



LuxLuthor said:


> I would have expected much higher.



Really?? 38,160,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Lumens :rock: 

That is a lot of lumens!


jtr1962, great post man!! You really know your Science, thats impressive. :rock:


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## greg_in_canada

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*



jtr1962 said:


> Working backwards a little, the sun's _total_ output without the earth's atmosphere in the way is about 1350 W/m². About half that is visible light, and the luminous efficacy of the solar spectrum is about 199 lm/W, so we get roughly 135,000 lumens/m². At the distance of the earth's orbit this energy falls on an imaginary sphere with a radius of 150 million kilometers, or 1.5 x 10^11 meters. The surface area of this sphere is 4*pi*r², or 2.827 x 10^23. Multiplying this by 135,000 lumens per m² gives us 3.816 x10^28 lumens, or put another way 38,160 trillion trillion lumens. Of course, this is an approximation, but it gives you some idea of the order of magnitude we're talking about here.
> 
> I heard the next release from Luxeon is going to have a similar output.


 
So if you used 100 lumen Luxeon III's you would need 3.8 x 10^26 of them. I don't know their weight but let's guess 1 gram. So that would be 3.8 x 10^23 kg of luxeons.

According to google the earth's mass is about 6x10^24 kg (= 60 x 10^23). So you only need 6.3% of the mass of the earth in Luxeon's to match the sun's output. The heatsinking and power supply might be a deal-breaker though 

Greg


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## CLHC

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*

If a pinhead sized piece of the sun's core could be placed here on earth—well we can't get within ninety (90) miles of it. That HOT! and That BRIGHT!


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## scaredofthedark

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*

thanks jtr1962 i suspect you have some kind of engineering degree to know all that physics  :rock:


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## Trashman

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*

38,160 trillion trillion lumens? If it is indeed written like PSM had it, that'd be 38 octillion, 160 septillion lumens!


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## 3rd_shift

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*

Well, that's our own little cordless star doing all that.
What about other stars in just the milky way alone?
There must be some better "binned" ones out there without that *V1* tint we gotta put up with literally every day.


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## LEDcandle

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*



jtr1962 said:


> Working backwards a little, the sun's _total_ output without the earth's atmosphere in the way is about 1350 W/m². About half that is visible light, and the luminous efficacy of the solar spectrum is about 199 lm/W, so we get roughly 135,000 lumens/m². At the distance of the earth's orbit this energy falls on an imaginary sphere with a radius of 150 million kilometers, or 1.5 x 10^11 meters. The surface area of this sphere is 4*pi*r², or 2.827 x 10^23. Multiplying this by 135,000 lumens per m² gives us 3.816 x10^28 lumens, or put another way 38,160 trillion trillion lumens. Of course, this is an approximation, but it gives you some idea of the order of magnitude we're talking about here.
> 
> I heard the next release from Luxeon is going to have a similar output.



Does the heatsink have to be the size of the Earth's core?


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## jtr1962

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*



LEDcandle said:


> Does the heatsink have to be the size of the Earth's core?


More likely the size of a red giant to effectively dissipate the heat for a mass of Luxeons equal to 6.3% of the Earth's mass.  BTW, the sun's output from my calculations is roughly 3.8 x 10^26 watts. 3.8 x 10^26 luxeons at about 3 watts power each would need 1.14 x 10^27 watts to power them, or about 3 times the entire solar output. That idea might be feasible if you put a Dyson sphere around a star putting at least 10 times as much power as the sun and cover it entirely with the best solar cells. You would certainly get the power you need. As already surmised, heatsinking becomes problematic. On your side is the fact that space is cold, huge, and with little gravity (except near planets or stars), so you could rig up a heat sink with huge surface area and not too much supporting mass.

Why anyone would want to actually use Luxeons to replace a star is beyond me given that you would need a star (or its equivalent) to power the array anyway. Logistically it would probably be easier to just tow a star to wherever you needed heat or light, but that's another thread entirely.


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## jtr1962

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*



scaredofthedark said:


> thanks jtr1962 i suspect you have some kind of engineering degree to know all that physics  :rock:


BSE, major electronics engineering, from the same school Albert Einstein taught at (let's see how many people know that bit of trivia). No, I'm not old enough to have actually met him.


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## nemul

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*

38 octillion lumens


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## Lit Up

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*



jtr1962 said:


> BSE, major electronics engineering, from the same school Albert Einstein taught at (let's see how many people know that bit of trivia).



*smacks buzzer*

What is Princeton, Alex?


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## The_LED_Museum

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*



3rd_shift said:


> ...What about other stars in just the milky way alone?...


The Sun is a type G main sequence yellow dwarf star; if you measured lumens from a type O blue supergiant star, I'm pretty certain those values would increase substantially.


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## carrot

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*

o/~ _The sun is a mass of incandescent gas; A gigantic nuclear furnace; Where hydrogen is built into helium; At a temperature of millions of degrees. The sun is hot, the sun is not; A place where we could live; But here on Earth there'd be no life; Without the light it gives._ o/~


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## CLHC

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*

I'm no astro-physicist or the like, but I found this interesting link. Maybe ya'll know about it.

http://www.sec.noaa.gov/Curric_7-12/Activity_4.pdf


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## dfred

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*



The_LED_Museum said:


> The Sun is a type G main sequence yellow dwarf star; if you measured lumens from a type O blue supergiant star, I'm pretty certain those values would increase substantially.



Yes, but you don't get particularly good runtime with this kind of output. Not much good if you're trying to give a solar system enough time to evolve life -- plus the extreme UV output isn't too helpful either. For shorter tasks, or simply showing off to friends, a blue supergiant might make sense.


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## nemul

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*



dfred said:


> Yes, but you don't get particularly good runtime with this kind of output. Not much good if you're trying to give a solar system enough time to evolve life -- plus the extreme UV output isn't too helpful either. For shorter tasks, or simply showing off to friends, a blue supergiant might make sense.



lmao good one


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## lightlust

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*

Yes, the sun puts out a lot of lumens.

But what about its lousy 14 billion year runtime?

Where the heck am I gonna get all the hydrogen nuclei I need to get this thing running again? All I have left in the battery drawer are AA's.


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## zespectre

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*

I want to thank everyone for this thread. I had a terrible day and was sorely in need of a good bellylaugh!

Thank you all VERY MUCH!

:lolsign: :goodjob: :thanks:


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## CLHC

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*

And you Sir are Very Much Welcome! ! !


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## greg_in_canada

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*



lightlust said:


> Yes, the sun puts out a lot of lumens.
> 
> But what about its lousy 14 billion year runtime?
> 
> Where the heck am I gonna get all the hydrogen nuclei I need to get this thing running again? All I have left in the battery drawer are AA's.


 
Store your extra hydrogen in the fridge (or freezer) to extend its shelf-life 

Greg


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## Lit Up

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*



lightlust said:


> Yes, the sun puts out a lot of lumens.
> 
> But what about its lousy 14 billion year runtime?



Hahaha

What's worse is we can't say with certainty just how much of that 14 billion has already been spent. :thinking:


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## WAVE_PARTICLE

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*

Now all we need is a giant reflector and an HA-3 hard anodized body.


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## Luna

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*



Amonra said:


> that should be relatively easy.......just pop it into an integrating sphere




I think we can just use the lightbox apparatus and multiply by 1.4


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## Lmtfi

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*

Twice as much as half of it.


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## leukos

*Re: how many lumens does the sun put out???*



WAVE_PARTICLE said:


> Now all we need is a giant reflector and an HA-3 hard anodized body.


 
Maybe with something like that we could finally light up a blackhole!


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## Dustin Liu

*How many lumens?*

How many lumens is the sun?

Seriously

I really want to know. :huh2::huh2::huh2:


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## Illumination

*Re: How many lumens?*

Lumens is a measure of total light output...the total light output of the sun is simply not worth comparing to any hand held flashlight. The sun lights up half the earth, the moon, and the rest of the planets in the solar system, etc. That is like comparing the weight of a grain of salt to the weight of the earth. Maybe that is what you are looking for...but I'm not sure why.

Or are you trying to compare brightness of sunlight versus the brightness of a flashlight on a particular object (e.g., a light meter). Then you should be comparing a measure of brightness, like lux (which is defined as lumens per square meter), of one versus the other.

Of course, you are then going to have to think about how far away the light will be held from the object you are illuminating. Lets first think about the brightness of flashlights. The *Throw *measure on Flashlight Reviews _Throw and Output Table_ shows the distance (in meters) a given light throws 1 lux. You can then use the inverse square law to figure out brightness at a given distance. The formula would be Brightness (in lux) @ Distance (in meters) = (1/ (Distance/Throw) )^2.

For an example, according to throw and output chart, the Surefire A2 Incan throws 45. Using the inverse square law, that light has a brightness of 2025 Lux at 1 meter.

To compare it to sunlight, look at this table I found this table on the internet:
*Brightness Values:

* Candle light at 20 cm 10-15 Lux
 Street light 10-20 Lux
Normal living room lighting 100 Lux
Office fluorescent light 300-500 Lux
Halogen lamp 750 Lux
Sunlight, 1 hour before sunset 1000 Lux
Daylight, cloudy sky 5000 Lux
Daylight, clear sky 10,000 Lux
Bright sunlight  > 20,000 Lux​So...an A2 at it's brightest spot shining at something one meter away is about half as bright as sunlight on a cloudy day. This seems reasonable - remember at night flashlights look so bright because everything else is dark and your eyes adapt.


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## ringzero

*Re: How many lumens?*



Dustin Liu said:


> How many lumens is the sun?



It's fairly straightforward:

1) Look up the Sun's total output in Watts. I've seen the figure, but don't remember offhand.

2) Look up the percentage of the total ouput that falls in the visible light part of the spectrum.

3) Calculate the visible light output of Sun in watts by multiplying 1) times 2). Maybe you can find this figure somewhere and skip the first two steps.

4) Last step: convert Watts to Lumens.


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## winny

*Re: How many lumens?*

~3.75×10^28 lm according to wikipedia.org

link


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## Gnufsh

*Re: How many lumens?*

Only a very tiny fraction of the light from the sun hits the earth, or any planet at all for that matter. The vast majority just heads off into space.


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## Nitro

*How Many Lumens Does Our Sun Produce?*

I've been thinking about this lately, but I haven't done any research on it. Any idea's?


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## Art Vandelay

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



Nitro said:


> I've been thinking about this lately, but I haven't done any research on it. Any idea's?


Great question. 

If it were a flashlight some guys around here would nitpick it. "Sure it's bright, but look at that yellow tint."

http://library.thinkquest.org/J002809/sun4.html
Credit to desmondpun for that link.


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## Nitro

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

So that's approx. 250,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Lumens.

Thinking about that kinda makes our feeble attempt at making brighter and brighter lights seem pretty insignificant. :candle:

The only reason there's a yellow tint is because thankfully we have a huge filter between us, air. Otherwise it would be pure white.

What would be really cool is if we could construct a massive reflector and aim all that light in one direction. Now there would be some *THROW*! 

Anybody know how to calculate the CandlePower, given the size of a reflector and light source?


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## DM51

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

Some months ago this thread caused a certain amount of mirth on the same subject.


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## Nitro

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



DM51 said:


> Some months ago this thread caused a certain amount of mirth on the same subject.


 
I missed that thread. Funny though.


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## havand

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

HA! Create a giant parabolic reflector out of a giant spinning liquid disk with some sort of adhesive chemical compound to increase it's attraction. get it spinning to make a perfect surface and position it by the sun. Precision aim it at planets, to make contact...or set them on fire.


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## DM51

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

Much easier to ask Ra to do that with his Maxablaster, lol


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## Nitro

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



havand said:


> HA! Create a giant parabolic reflector out of a giant spinning liquid disk with some sort of adhesive chemical compound to increase it's attraction. get it spinning to make a perfect surface and position it by the sun. Precision aim it at planets, to make contact...or set them on fire.


 
Interesting idea. It just may work. I'm game! 

Although, if it were aimed at a planet, I think "set on fire" would be an understatement. With that much energy I think it would instantly disintegrate it.

Anyone know how to calculate the CP given the size of reflector. I'm also wondering how much hotter/brighter it would be on Earth if it were pointed in our direction for the instant before


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## Nitro

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



DM51 said:


> Much easier to ask Ra to do that with his Maxablaster, lol


 
OR, BVH with his Carbon Arc.


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## lyyyghtmaster

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

Yeah, I remember seeing that thread about 8-10 mos. ago, but didn't follow up on it for some reason. Is that where that 250 octillion lm. figure came from? There are all kinds of resources around, probably many here on CPF, to calculate various things about light sources, but my brain is way too fried at the moment to attempt any of them!  :sick2: 

The sun ain't really all that yellow at noon. CCT ~ 5600K in summer near the equator. It just looks yellow by comparison to the sky. If you take a 5600K LED neutral-white (on the Planckian Locus) torch which can easily match the sun in lux at very short distances naughty, it actually looks only very slightly different from the sun at noon (relatively clear, unpolluted sky) on a white surface. Near sunrise or sunset, all bets are off. Sunlight becomes very yellowish at these times- a torch or CFL at 4100K CCT, on the Planckian, will look positively pinkish by comparison!

About blowing up planets with a "SunnyBeam" (Disclaimers: I just came up with this name; did a search of CPF- no hits; I'm not trying to step on anyone's toes if this name is already used! In the "explosion" section of this post, I am in no way trying to threaten, harass, impugn, belittle, or disrespect anyone living on planets, or sufficiently close to planets, which could conceivably be so affected, however close this may be. The writer of this post is, in fact, such a person. This post is intended to be a very bizarre continuation of the humor already beginning to be hinted at by other posters.):

If our Sun were directed at a rocky planet, the planet would probably vaporize, starting with the exposed side, in rather short order. The gravity of the instantaneously remaining planet at each instant would try to reform the remaining planet material back into a sphere, since gravity overwhelms material strength at this scale, but the explosive forces and inertia would make this far too slow and weak for it to noticeably happen before the entire planet was vaporized/exploded, methinks. It would probably be similar to our nation's Capitol buildings in Independence Day.  The vaporized side of the planet would expand with explosive force, blowing the remaining piece of the planet apart.  :laughing: If the beam were left "on" long enough, much of the gas and debris would be expelled so far away that they would have no chance of gravity reforming them back into a planet, methinks. :twothumbs

If directed at a gaseous planet, it would probably just blow the gas all over the place. :thumbsup:

In either case, the intense force of collecting the solar wind would have to be balanced somehow by the reflector or by innumerable immense rockets on the other side of it, or focus would become impaired after some amount of time. I have no idea if gravity of the sun would be strong enough to resolve this force or not. Probably not, for a thin reflector. :sigh: Since gravity and radiation both basically seem to follow the inverse square law AFAIK, the forces should be reasonably balanced across the reflector, at least if the reflector is many times farther from the sun than the sun's diameter, which it would have to be for optimal focus anyway, and to keep it from vaporizing.:mecry:






Nitro said:


> Interesting idea. It just may work. I'm game!
> 
> Although, if it were aimed at a planet, I think "set on fire" would be an understatement. With that much energy I think it would instantly disintegrate it.


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