The most powerful light on planet Earth...???

[AlexGT]

Hi guys!

I was looking at this site, and was thinking if this would be the brightest light on planet Earth?
http://www.xenotechusa.com/products/studio_10k.asp

It´s rated at ONE BILLION Candlepower (No offence, but the beast would look like a simple match in comparison)I wonder how much runtime would I get from 123´s

, or how would it look on the top of my truck !

Anyway, is this the ultimate most powerful light source? or is there a brighter one?(Nuke blast don´t count, ok?)

Thnx

Alex

 

[Graham]

Now that's a pretty serious light. Needs 3 phase power though, and 40 amps of it at that. You'd need a small mountain of 123a's just to get a glimmer...

Graham
(who'd be happy just to get his hands on a little old Light Cannon..

)

 

[Size15's]

I thought the NightTracker Dominator was the brightest self-contained illumination source 'you' can buy... 6 Billion CP or something!

Al

 

[Tree]

We use these http://www.skytracker.com/ at a lot of the shows we do. I'm sure most of you have seen them at one time or another. The web page says a billion candlepower, I'll try to get more specs at work.

 

[lightlover]

See also

Topic: Brightest lights on Earth, Xenotech, makers of the Skytracker system
@ http://www.candlepowerforums.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=15&t=000010

lightlover

 

[Jonathan]

If you include UV and soft X-rays as contenders, then you should look atBerkeley's Advanced Light Source

I'd have to spend some time figuring out the units that they are using to make a proper comparison, but the graph at the bottom of the page seems to suggest that their brightest beam is 100,000 billion (10^14)times brighter than a candle.

-Jon

 

[LEDagent]

wow...10,000watt short arc lamp...never knew something of that strength and magnitud even existed....sheesh 10,000watts - i can't believe it...i'm loosing my breath and my body is getting weak - i feel faint.

Is that what they use on top of Luxor in Las Vegas? Seriously though....can anyone give me a comparison as to what 10,000watt HID lighting looks like? I probably have seen it before but just have never thought about it in numbers like this.

Do spotlights that they use on grand opennings this intense? I've always wondered how powerful those things were. Have you ever driven by or walked by those things? I feel....scared for some reason...standing by something with such power.

Seriously people...right now i am at a stage of enlightnment. I'm confused, new doors are opened and a whole new world is present.......10,000 FREAKIN WATTS!! [falls to the floor with a smile.]

 

[Gandalf]

I think the carbon arc-lights used in advertising, some of which may date back to WW II, may very well beat the xenon powered light. The reflectors on some them I've seen of them are much larger than 30". And they require a huge generator to run them. When lights get this bright, it's probably difficult to really get an accurate measure of light output: not many instruments are capable of measuring them. But this is all supposition, mainly I wanted to bring up the arc-lamp as a light source, compared to oyher types. My guess would be that a short arc xenon lamp would be much more efficient, but that large arc-lamps may be capable of generating the most light. Any one have any experience with arc-lamps? Aside from the one I built when I was about 13 years old, usic pencil sized carbon rods, I have only seen the huge searchlight type arc-light. I did manage to get a pretty severe sun burn, in the middle of the winter, from the one I built. *Lots* of UV light produced by carbon arc-lamps. The one I built was using somewhere between 15 and 20 amps, at 110 volts. It would blow a 15 amp circuit breaker, but run on a 20 amp circuit.

 

[Brock]

We have 4 2000w Xenon Strong Super Troopers. They are follow spots, the ones we have are "long throw" units. We throw about 160 feet to a max pool of light about 15 feet across, and the smallest about 1 foot across. If you put you hand in front of them you can literally see all the bones in your hand, but it gets quite warm rather quickly. It also gives off a LOT of UV, so you could get a sunburn with it also. They are rather large, about 7 feet in length and the lamps go for about $1000 each. I have seen spots up to 4kw, and one 10kw unit at a lighting show, wicked...

 

[AlexGT]

I´m going to risk it and make a stupid question...

Stupid mode on...

how many watts or reflector size would it take to make a light so intense that it could be seen on the moon?... told ya it was stupid

I know a lasser is the way to go, just stupid curious

One more thing, have you seen the documental "Trinity and beyond"?,awesome nuke blasts ! Wonder if someone measured the light output from the blasts? I would say it did 6 digits lumen numbers

Stupid mode off...

Alex

 

[Jonathan]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by AlexGT:
how many watts or reflector size would it take to make a light so intense that it could be seen on the moon?... told ya it was stupid

Alex<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

One of the experiments left as part of the Apollo program was a retroreflector array, about the size of a briefcase. The earthbound part of the experiment shines a laser at the reflector, and then looks for the reflection in a telescope, to measure the distance to the moon.

A bigger issue than the amount of power needed to produce a light seen from the moon is the amount of power to produce a light which could be _recognised_ from the moon against the background of all of the other lights. When the moon is facing the dark side of the Earth, then the Sun is in pretty much the same part of the sky as the Earth...and it would be hard to outdo the sun for brightness.

 

[Kenshiro]

Actually, the Spotlight on top of the Luxor is the most powerful light in the world. When it first came out, it was the official champ, and I don't know of any light surpassing yet. It is quoted to be the equivalent of 40 billion CP.

It uses HID technology as well, but it uses multiple lamps. As well as a enormous reflector.

It's funny that the question came out about how much light and reflector would be needed to shine light on the moon.
The Luxor spotlight and the Great wall of China are the only two man-made objects that can be seen on the moon (Again, this is from all the news when the Luxor opened).
So there's your answer. Have the amount of light produced by the Luxor spotlight, and have it reflected by a reflector the size of the one in the Luxor.

 

[Kenshiro]

Oops, forgot to mention some other stuff.....

Looking through the most recent Osram catalog, the current monster that Osram offers is the HMI 18000W.

It's rated at 18,000 W. That's right. Eighteen thousand.....

Oh, and what's more, the lumens is rated at 1,700,000lm. That's right. One-point-seven million.....

And HMI lamps offer a color temp. of 6000K, which is very very close to sunlight.

It's a double-ended bulb, the length being 500mm (~19.69in) and the center "arc sphere" being 70mm (~2.76in). Not bad. In fact, it's quite small considering the amount of light it produces.

HMI lights are considered the cutting edge in HID. Check out Halcyon Systems' great dive lights that use this technology also.
http://www.halcyon.net/

They have "normal" HID lights, and they have the HMI lights as well.