Remote Skylights are optical systems capable of providing

natural light Natural Light, formerly Anheuser-Busch Natural Light, nicknamed Natty, is an American reduced-calorie light lager brewed by Anheuser-Busch. Its ingredients are listed as water, barley malt, cereal grains, yeast, and hops. One serving contains ...

to unlit locations. An arrangement of parabolic reflectors and

optical fiber cable A fiber-optic cable, also known as an optical-fiber cable, is an assembly similar to an electrical cable but containing one or more optical fibers that are used to carry light. The optical fiber elements are typically individually coated with p ...

s, transport natural sunlight to areas that would otherwise be dark or be lit artificially. Remote skylights are composed chiefly of a solar collection dish, a "heliotube" and a distribution dish. The collection and distribution dishes are both

parabolic reflector A parabolic (or paraboloid or paraboloidal) reflector (or dish or mirror) is a Mirror, reflective surface used to collect or project energy such as light, sound, or radio waves. Its shape is part of a circular paraboloid, that is, the surface ge ...

s. The collection dish is connected to a

heliostat A heliostat () is a device that reflects sunlight toward a target, turning to compensate for the Sun's apparent motion. The reflector is usually a plane mirror. The target may be a physical object, distant from the heliostat, or a direct ...

, a mechanism which tracks the transit of the sun across the sky, so as to maximize the intensity of light falling upon it. The heliotube is a fiber

light tube Light tubes (also known as solar pipes, tubular skylights or sun tunnels) are structures that transmit or distribute natural or artificial light for the purpose of illumination and are examples of optical waveguides. In their application to ...

, a bundle of

optical fiber An optical fiber, or optical fibre, is a flexible glass or plastic fiber that can transmit light from one end to the other. Such fibers find wide usage in fiber-optic communications, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at ...

s that channel the collected sunlight from the collection dish to the distribution dish. Unlike a typical

skylight A skylight (sometimes called a rooflight) is a light-permitting structure or window, usually made of transparent or translucent glass, that forms all or part of the roof space of a building for daylighting and ventilation purposes. History O ...

, the heliotube allows the two dishes to be in different places. Remote Skylights were invented by RAAD studio in order to provide natural illumination to the proposed Lowline underground park.

Benefits

Remote Skylights provide two key advantages over artificial illumination: # The transported light contains the frequencies necessary for

photosynthesis Photosynthesis ( ) is a system of biological processes by which photosynthetic organisms, such as most plants, algae, and cyanobacteria, convert light energy, typically from sunlight, into the chemical energy necessary to fuel their metabo ...

. (Though it is reported that harmful UV rays are filtered out.) # No power is required to sustain the illumination. This means that (after construction) no harmful

greenhouse gases Greenhouse gases (GHGs) are the gases in the atmosphere that raise the surface temperature of planets such as the Earth. Unlike other gases, greenhouse gases absorb the radiations that a planet emits, resulting in the greenhouse effect. T ...

are produced.

References

{{reflist Fiber optics Lighting Solar architecture Energy-saving lighting Sustainable building Windows

Benefits

See also

References