Solar Energy Light Spectrum

Electromagnetic energy travels in waves and spans a broad spectrum from very long radio waves to very short gamma rays.

Solar energy light spectrum. Light from 400 700 nanometers nm is called visible light or the visible spectrum because humans can see it light outside of this range may be visible to other organisms but cannot be perceived by the human eye. The sun emits em radiation across most of the electromagnetic spectrum although the sun produces gamma rays as a result of the nuclear fusion process internal absorption and thermalization convert these super high energy photons to lower energy photons before they reach the sun s. The human eye can only detect only a small portion of this spectrum called visible light. About 70 of the visible irradiance makes it all the way to sea level.

Note the following for the solar spectrum. Solar irradiance is the power per unit area received from the sun in the form of electromagnetic radiation as reported in the wavelength range of the measuring instrument. The human eye sees color over wavelengths ranging roughly from 400 nanometers violet to 700 nanometers red. Red light leds have been familiar for decades but it was only in the 1990s that a new generation of wide band gap leds emerged capable of radiating light at the blue end of the spectrum.

A team of researchers from george washington university has devised a new layered solar panel that can absorb light from a wider range of the spectrum pushing the efficiency as high as 44 5 percent. To keep up the analogy to uv rays a solar panel that collects from less than half of the spectrum is like a. A radio detects a different portion of the spectrum and an x ray machine uses yet another portion. Light emitting diodes made of indium gallium nitride held clues to the potential new solar cell material.

What is electromagnetic energy. O 3 and o 2 absorb much of the uv irradiance below 300 nm high in the atmosphere. O 3 absorbs a little of the. About half of the energy is in the visible wavelengths below 0 7 μm.

We can tell this by doing a quick integration. Visible light from a human perspective is less than half the sun s total output.