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Daylight Chemical Information Systems
Daylight is the combination of all direct and indirect sunlight during the daytime. This includes direct sunlight, diffuse sky radiation, and (often) both of these reflected by Earth and terrestrial objects, like landforms and buildings. Sunlight scattering, scattered or reflected by astronomical objects is generally not considered daylight. Therefore, daylight excludes moonlight, despite it being reflected indirect sunlight. Definition Daylight is present at a particular location, to some degree, whenever the Sun is above the local horizon. This is true for slightly more than 50% of the Earth at any given time, since the Earth's atmosphere refracts some sunlight even when the Sun is below the horizon. Outdoor illuminance varies 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 d ...
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New England's Dark Day
New England's Dark Day occurred on May 19, 1780, when an unusual darkening of the daytime sky was observed over the New England states and parts of eastern Canada. The primary cause of the event is believed to have been a combination of smoke from forest fires, a thick fog, and cloud cover. The darkness was so complete that candles were required from noon on. It did not disperse until the middle of the next night. Range of the darkness According to Professor Samuel Williams of Harvard College, the darkness was seen at least as far north as Portland, Maine, and extended southwards to New Jersey. The darkness was not witnessed in Pennsylvania. Revolutionary War soldier Joseph Plumb Martin noted: We were here ew Jerseyat the time the "dark day" happened, (19th of May;) it has been said that the darkness was not so great in New-Jersey as in New-England. How great it was there I do not know, but I know that it was very dark where I then was in New-Jersey; so much so that the fo ...
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Sunlight
Sunlight is the portion of the electromagnetic radiation which is emitted by the Sun (i.e. solar radiation) and received by the Earth, in particular the visible spectrum, visible light perceptible to the human eye as well as invisible infrared (typically perceived by humans as warmth) and ultraviolet (which can have physiological effects such as sunburn) lights. However, according to the American Meteorological Society, there are "conflicting conventions as to whether all three [...] are referred to as light, or whether that term should only be applied to the visible portion of the spectrum." Upon reaching the Earth, sunlight is light scattering by particles, scattered and attenuation, filtered through the atmosphere of Earth, Earth's atmosphere as daylight when the Sun is above the horizon. When direct solar radiation is not blocked by clouds, it is experienced as sunshine, a combination of bright light and radiant heat (atmospheric). When cloud cover, blocked by clouds or dif ...
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Solar System
The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar System" and "solar system" structures in theinaming guidelines document. The name is commonly rendered in lower case ('solar system'), as, for example, in the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' an''Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary''. is the gravitationally bound Planetary system, system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it. It Formation and evolution of the Solar System, formed about 4.6 billion years ago when a dense region of a molecular cloud collapsed, forming the Sun and a protoplanetary disc. The Sun is a typical star that maintains a hydrostatic equilibrium, balanced equilibrium by the thermonuclear fusion, fusion of hydrogen into helium at its stellar core, core, releasing this energy from its outer photosphere. As ...
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Airglow
Airglow is a faint emission of light by a planetary atmosphere. In the case of Earth's atmosphere, this optical phenomenon causes the night sky never to be completely dark, even after the effects of starlight and diffuse sky radiation, diffused sunlight from the far side are removed. This phenomenon originates with self-illuminated gases and has no relationship with Earth's magnetic field, Earth's magnetism or sunspot activity, causing aurorae. Airglow occurs in two forms, resulting by two different processes, but both having the same cause. Airglow is caused by sunlight splitting atmospheric molecules, which at this point produce during day the dayglow called airglow, which is too faint to be seen in daylight. During the night airglow occurs as nightglow, resulting from the recombination of the molecules which were split during daytime. History The airglow phenomenon was first identified in 1868 by Swedish physicist Anders Ångström. Since then, it has been studied in the ...
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Starlight
Starlight is the light emitted by stars. It typically refers to visible electromagnetic radiation from stars other than the Sun, observable from Earth at night, although a component of starlight is observable from Earth during daytime. Sunlight is the term used for the Sun's starlight observed during daytime. During nighttime, albedo describes solar reflections from other Solar System objects, including moonlight, planetshine, and zodiacal light. Observation Observation and measurement of starlight through telescopes is the basis for many fields of astronomy, including photometry and stellar spectroscopy. Hipparchus did not have a telescope or any instrument that could measure apparent brightness accurately, so he simply made estimates with his eyes. He sorted the stars into six brightness categories, which he called magnitudes.''Astronomy''. https://d3bxy9euw4e147.cloudfront.net/oscms-prodcms/media/documents/Astronomy-Draft-20160817.pdf: Rice University. 2016. p. 761. - v ...
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Lunar Phase
A lunar phase or Moon phase is the apparent shape of the Moon's directly sunlit portion as viewed from the Earth. Because the Moon is tidally locked with the Earth, the same hemisphere is always facing the Earth. In common usage, the four major phases are the new moon, the first quarter, the full moon and the last quarter; the four minor phases are waxing crescent, waxing gibbous, waning gibbous, and waning crescent. A lunar month is the time between successive recurrences of the same phase: due to the eccentricity of the Moon's orbit, this duration is not perfectly constant but averages about 29.5 days. The appearance of the Moon (its phase) gradually changes over a lunar month as the relative orbital positions of the Moon around Earth, and Earth around the Sun, shift. The visible side of the Moon is sunlit to varying extents, depending on the position of the Moon in its orbit, with the sunlit portion varying from 0% (at new moon) to nearly 100% (at full moon). Phenomenon ...
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Night Sky
The night sky is the nighttime appearance of celestial objects like stars, planets, and the Moon, which are visible in a clear sky between sunset and sunrise, when the Sun is below the horizon. Natural light sources in a night sky include moonlight, starlight, and airglow, depending on location and timing. Aurorae light up the skies above the polar circles. Occasionally, a large coronal mass ejection from the Sun or simply high levels of solar wind may extend the phenomenon toward the Equator. The night sky and studies of it have a historical place in both ancient and modern cultures. In the past, for instance, farmers have used the status of the night sky as a calendar to determine when to plant crops. Many cultures have drawn constellations between stars in the sky, using them in association with legends and mythology about their deities. The history of astrology has generally been based on the belief that relationships between heavenly bodies influence or explain events on Ear ...
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Moonlight
Moonlight consists of mostly sunlight (with little earthlight) reflected from the parts of the Moon's surface where the Sun's light strikes. History The ancient Greek philosopher Anaxagoras was aware that "''the sun provides the moon with its brightness''". Zhang Heng's treatise "''The Spiritual Constitution of the Universe''" concludes that the light of the moon comes from the Sun. He writes that the Sun and Moon are "like fire and water" where the Sun "gives out light" and the Moon "reflects it". Illumination The intensity of moonlight varies greatly depending on the lunar phase, but even the full moon typically provides only about 0.05–0.1  lux illumination. When a full Moon around perigee (a " supermoon") is viewed around upper culmination from the tropics, the illuminance can reach up to 0.32 lux. From Earth, the apparent magnitude of the full Moon is only about that of the Sun. The color of moonlight, particularly around full moon, appears bluish to th ...
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Sunset
Sunset (or sundown) is the disappearance of the Sun at the end of the Sun path, below the horizon of the Earth (or any other astronomical object in the Solar System) due to its Earth's rotation, rotation. As viewed from everywhere on Earth, it is a phenomenon that happens approximately once every 24 hours, except in areas close to the Geographical pole, poles. The equinox Sun sets due west at the moment of both the spring and autumn equinoxes. As viewed from the Northern Hemisphere, the Sun sets to the northwest (or not at all) in the spring and summer, and to the southwest in the autumn and winter; these seasons are reversed for the Southern Hemisphere. The sunset is defined in astronomy the moment the upper limb of the Sun disappears below the horizon. Near the horizon, atmospheric refraction causes sunlight rays to be distorted to such an extent that geometrically the solar disk is already about one diameter below the horizon when a sunset is observed. Sunset is distinct from ...
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Sunrise
Sunrise (or sunup) is the moment when the upper rim of the Sun appears on the horizon in the morning, at the start of the Sun path. The term can also refer to the entire process of the solar disk crossing the horizon. Terminology Although the Sun appears to "rise" from the horizon, it is actually the ''Earth's'' motion that causes the Sun to appear. The illusion of a moving Sun results from Earth observers being in a rotating reference frame; this apparent motion caused many cultures to have mythologies and religions built around the geocentric model, which prevailed until astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus formulated his heliocentric model in the 16th century. Architect Buckminster Fuller proposed the terms "sunsight" and "sunclipse" to better represent the heliocentric model, though the terms have not entered into common language. Astronomically, sunrise occurs for only an instant, namely the moment at which the upper limb of the Sun appears tangent to the horizon. However, th ...
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