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American education system in action everybody
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2026
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Moonlight is from the sun, and "has heat" in as much of a sense as sunlight does. Do you think solar panels can tell whether light is coming from the sun, moon, a distant star, or a flashlight? They just turn the photons into electricity, it doesn't care where they're from.
Have you ever been warmed by moonlight? It doesn't give energy.
Yes, I have. It's less energy than comes straight from the sun, but it still carries energy, because it's all just photons. The photons from the sun aren't hotter than the ones reflected from the moon, there's just more of them.
Some photons are hotter than others. Its the wavelengths and frequencies. No UV from moonlight
You are fascinating. I mean yes, individual photons carry different amounts of energy and that's reflected in their wavelength, but how do you know that and not how reflection works? Moonlight contains a similar proportion of UV to sunlight, there's just less total light.
At best, somewhere around one quarter of a percent as much light. It seems to crazy to think something that looks as bright as it does is such a tiny fraction of what the sun puts out. It seems obvious that you aren't going to notice the heating of moonlight on your face the same way you notice the heating of sunlight on your face when you realize how much different the scale is.
I am surprised / impressed that the solar panels are apparently collecting 3 times that much at night (and that is assuming it even was a full moon whenever this infographic was referring to). I wonder how much of that is stars or if it is basically just re-collecting a bit of light pollution from nearby population centers.
Emission spectrum from the sun peaks at under 500nm corresponding to >5800K. Emission spectrum from the moon peaks at 600nm, corresponding to <4100K. Moonlight is objectively colder and therefore gives less energy. Reflection does not necessarily preserve spectral characteristics.
https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/jres/118/jres.118.020.pdf
https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/climate/projects/solar-irradiance/science
You could have just claimed that from that start instead of the black and white "doesn't have heat", "doesn't give energy".
Less funny though
So what I'm hearing is that moonlight does have energy and UV radiation and can generate electricity. Thanks for agreeing with me.
My friend I am taking the piss
Sorry bud, the deadline for that excuse was 3 or 4 comments ago. You're stoopid.
Touched a nerve did I?
Don't quit your day job.
Hi
Emission spectra are Schwartzkopf radiation, thats hardly relevant for the moon, whose main source of radiation is reflection. For visible light its easy, else the moon would always be full. Infrared is lower frequency and thus lower energy. UV reflection should be the only consideration.
Wavelengths and frequencies are the same thing, just inverted. E=hf/c. Ask ya boy, Albert
It's a subset of the wavelengths of sunlight, specifically just those which add up to the color of the moon.
The problem is not the "quality" of the light, it's the quantity: moonlight has way less brightness than sunlight, specifically from here you get that the brightness of moonlight is 0.05 - 0.3 lux whilst that of direct sunlight is 32,000–100,000 lux.
Less brightness pretty much directly translates to less power produced by a solar panel.
So you can actually generate power in a solar panel from moonlight (photons of the same color have the same wavelength hence the same amount of energy, so are equally capable of inducing electron release independently of how those photons got there), it's just a ridiculously small amount compared to how much you can generate under its optimal operating conditions (under direct sunlight) because moonlight is made up of far fewer photons than direct sunlight.