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Daylight |
Daylight or the light of day is the combination of all direct and indirect sunlight outdoors during the daytime (and perhaps twilight). This includes direct sunlight, diffuse sky radiation, and (often) both of these reflected from the Earth and terrestrial objects. Sunlight scattered or reflected from objects in outer space (that is, beyond the Earth's atmosphere) is generally not considered daylight. Thus, moonlight is never considered daylight, despite being "indirect sunlight". Daytime is the period of time each day when daylight occurs.
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Daylight is present at a particular location, to some degree, whenever the sun is above the horizon at that location. (This is true for slightly more than 50% of the Earth at any given time. For an explanation of why it is not exactly half, see the section labeled "introduction" on the "day" article). However, the outdoor illuminance can vary from 120,000 lux for direct sunlight at noon, which may cause eye pain, to less than 5 lux for thick storm clouds with the sun at the horizon (even <1 lux for the most extreme case), which may make shadows from distant street lights visible. It may be darker under unusual circumstances such as a solar eclipse or very high levels of atmospheric smoke (See New England's Dark Day), dust [1] , or volcanic ash [2] .
| Illuminance | Example |
|---|---|
| 120000 lux | Brightest sunlight |
| 110000 lux | Bright sunlight |
| 20000 lux | Shade illuminated by entire clear blue sky, midday |
| 10000 - 25000 lux | Typical overcast day, midday |
| <200 lux | Extreme of darkest storm clouds, midday |
| 400 lux | Sunrise or sunset on a clear day (ambient illumination). |
| 40 lux | Fully overcast, sunset/sunrise |
| <1 lux | Extreme of darkest storm clouds, sunset/rise |
For comparison, nighttime illuminance levels are:
| Illuminance | Example |
|---|---|
| <1 lux | Moonlight1 |
| 0.25 lux | Full Moon on a clear night2 |
| 0.01 lux | Quarter Moon |
| 0.001 lux | Moonless clear night sky |
| 0.0001 lux | Moonless overcast night sky |
| 0.00005 lux | Starlight |
For a table of approximate daylight intensity in the Solar System, see sunlight.
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This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (October 2008) |
Daylight is widely accepted to have a positive psychological effect on the human being, and consequently more cases of mental health problems are registered during the winter months than during the summer months due to the shortened periods of daylight. Cases of depression specifically linked to limited daylight are referred to as seasonal affective disorder.
Daylighting is lighting an indoor space with openings such as windows and skylights that allow daylight into the building. This type of lighting is chosen to save energy, to avoid hypothesized adverse health effects of over-illumination by artificial light, and also for aesthetics.
In recent years, work has taken place to recreate the effects of daylight artificially. This is however expensive in terms of both equipment and energy consumption and is applied almost exclusively in specialist areas such as filmmaking, where light of such intensity is required anyway.
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