Solar Definition and 1000 Threads

Homework Statement Hello everyone, I'm working on a (simplified) Mars energy model in which I need to calculate the area of land I need to cover in solar panels in order to achieve an particular power output. Say the land I'm looking at receives a constant solar irradiance of 100W/m^2 from...

Greg Bernhardt submitted a new PF Insights post Getting Started with Solar System Imaging Continue reading the Original PF Insights Post.

Problem Description: I have a solar panel of some surface area, material, and thickness mounted to an enclosure. The panel is isolated from the enclosure at some distance with a multitude of materials (air, insulation, plastic, metal) between the back surface of the panel and interior volume...

Hello, My question is, how much dark matter (any of mass, volume, density, etc) would we have to have in our solar system for us to detect it? My guess is that we would detect the dark matter through gravitational lensing or the perturbation of planetary orbits. On previous posts about dark...

Hi everyone This thread is for showing your images of solar activity taken with YOUR cameras, telescopes etc. That is, don't post images from SDO, SOHO or any other professional sources unless you specifically want to ask "how do they do that and what are those solar features I can see? This...

Solar panels come with a diode like in diagram A what does this accomplish as I always hook them up like in diagram B

I have a solar panel rated 20 volts and 6 amps power comes in on 4 12 gauge copper wires 2 for ground and 2 for positive and it is 50 feet long if positive and negative are shorted togather will the wire get warm?

I am picking this up as a continuation and extension of the idea laid out e.g. in @davenn 's thread "The Sun today - 9 July 2017 - nice spot group" https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/the-sun-today-9-july-2017-nice-spot-group.919696/ See also (for continuity purposes)...

Why didn't the Earth get dark? Apparently, even in a total eclipse the moon doesn't block out the total circumference of the sun. Is it a matter of geometry?

Hi, I don't have much experience with amateur astronomy, but I was going to try and take a few shots with my Canon EOS 20d mounted on my 6" Ritchey-Chretien astrograph this Monday. The telescope was manufactured by Orion, and was a few hundred dollars so probably not the highest quality. Since...

I've been working on a crude N-body simulator which allows N bodies of equal masses to interact gravitationally in 2 dimensions. My goal is to model the formation of Solar System. Each body is modeled as a circle with a radius as a function of its mass, in such a way that all bodies have the...

is solar even viable way to replace oil? using just the current US joules consumption and the existing solar technology, is it possible to switch to solar if oil will run dry in say 50yrs from now? solar technology seems to be approaching some theoretical limits, somewhere around 30%...

Hi, Can someone start me out with creating predictable temperatures and inputs for calculations. Here is a miniature example of the type of parabolic circulated water heating devices I have been building. My first questions would be what is the potential heating energy of the sun per cm2? And...

Hi all, My name is Jesse and I love renewable energy and finding ways of beating coal. Right now Solar Photovoltaic energy competes with coal in sunny areas during the day, but at night, you need to store the energy from solar and it's not worth it due to the cost of storage mechanisms (might...

I have solar panels fitted, with a capacity of 2.4 -2.5 kW. I am considering buying lithium battery storage for evening use. What would be the largest battery system I could charge from this setup?

Trying to figure out how many particles would bombard an astronaut during a solar proton event. Given that the most possible is around 43,000 particle flux units (pfu) according to NASA. First calculating steradians, assuming a person is 1m^2, 1/(1E9)^2=1E-18. My calculation yields (43000...

Hello MHB Community! :D As I'm sure most of you who live in the U.S. are aware, we will be witness to a solar eclipse on the 21st of August and the path of totality will cut across the continental U.S.: I live in NE Florida, and will experience almost 90% obscurity, but I have family in TN...

I am working on a simulation of the solar system, but I am having problems with the orbits with Europa and Io shown in the image below, the orbits of Jupiter, Ganymede and Callisto are consistent with NASA's simulations. For all bodies I have used identical parameters in generating the initial...

Looking for a practical description. I have a feeling I am grossly misunderstanding something fundamental about electric circuits and apologize if my questions are confusing because of it. I have these two sources: acs hyperphysics My (probably naive) understanding of the process is as...

Hi all, I'm trying to calculate the daily solar insolation (integrated solar irradiances from sunrise to sunset) for a given location and day of the year. For latitude 43.2° and April 15th, I get: H0 = (solar constant * scale factor for intra annual variation of sun-earth distance * 86400...

Hi all, According to the sunrise equation, the hour angle of the sun at sunset is: cos H = -tan(a)tan(d) where H = the hour angle, a = latitude and d = solar declination angle. This equation says that H at sunset = -H at sunrise. Now, I have a few questions concerning that: 1) I was...

Hi, as a side project I am making a solar system simulator in Python, but I am getting extreme inaccuracies. As the image shows - I am comparing the simulation to data obtained from NASA's Horizon. I have written a a basic Verlet integrator in the Python class posten below: import numpy as...

We want to increase the efficiency of our solar panels at home by decreasing their temperatures. Is there an equation that would help us calculate the distance between each fin and how many fins we should install? And an equation to calculate the suitable shape of fin to be using? And should...

I have a very simple question about solar photovoltaic systems. We all know that they have limited efficiency. Suppose there is a module that is 10% efficient i.e. it can convert 10% of sunlight falling onto it into electricity. I just want to know what will happen to the rest 90%? I mean do...

If one was to create an array of X amount of mirrors tracking the sun and shining on a targeted spot in the sky to create ions at specific elevations similar to a ladder, could this cause an ion column to create a continuous charge of energy from the upper atmosphere to hit the ground? Lets...

Hey! So I'm building raspberry pi & camera powered buy a solar panel system to make a automatic timeline of a constructing site (It needs to work for about ~9months). The rasp only needs to be on a few minutes a day to take a picture or really small video (max 1min). So this is my plan...

Is doping only to form an electric field in depletion region? Somehow I'm confused as far as I'm reading right now, the doping-generated carrier never discussed its role in the solar cell (other than leaving the ion and causing an electric field). Is not the number of carriers generated by...

It's mid summer and I think I need a project to keep busy. What better than a solar project? Problem is, I've never built a solar circuit before, let alone a battery charger. Ideally, I would like to build the equivalent of a solar powered generator. I know there's no way I'm getting as much...

Hello, the name's Mike and I'm a newbie here, I have a question pertaining to solar angles required to calculate a solar panel's hourly generation over one year. Total solar irradiance on a tilted surface equals the sum of the direct, diffuse and reflected component. In my case, reflection is...

My understanding: Circuit is ~ 30 million years. Plane of solar system orbit is tilted from plane of milky way. Is milky way plane crossed once or twice? What is error bar for 30 million? How much does dark matter density vary along solar system path?

Hello, I've been building my own solar panel system and throughout this process I've accumulated a lot of questions. If anyone could help answer them I would greatly appreciate it! First I'll start off explaining what I have. A polycrystalline solar panel 17V 2.2A and a mono crystalline panel...

Is there any evidence of the enlargement of planetary orbits over time? Are the planets moving further from the sun?

I have a large array of solar panels, which are 12v panels. I have wired them two each in series to produce 24v at the array and carry that to a 24v charge controller which then connects to two 12v batteries wired in series for 24v, to power a 24 volt inverter. But I have observed a problem...

Hey guys, I am a Chinese student who is now reading the doctoral dissertation written by Mr. Heoksema, Structure and Evolution of the Large-Scale Solar and Heliospheric Magnetic Fields, for the preparation of my bachelor thesis. But some puzzles arise while reading the mathematic development of...

Hi, I'm trying to build an auto-sufficient station, this is my "blueprint" for mounting everything together : https://goo.gl/photos/4KLmhUc9EDccMPkYA and I would like to know if it was possible to calculate the voltage and intensity entering the Charge Controller without measuring it, if...

Hello, I am new to this forum, so be brutal :) So, I've tried to find information about Earth's origin. The nebula, cluster we are a part of etc. but i could not find the answer I was looking for. For me, it seems logical that we are a part of a cluster. How often do we find a star whos just...

NASA just announced a solar probe to travel quite close to the Sun, about 3.7 million miles from the solar surface: Nasa’s hotly anticipated solar mission renamed to honour astrophysicist Eugene Parker. Renamed the Parker Solar Probe to honour solar astrophysicist who predicted high speed solar...

Homework Statement For an engineering assessment (first year with no electrical background), we are using a solar panel to power an element for a distillation system. we have calculated our heat energy output requirement that we need from our heating element as being 800 J/s. For simplicity we...

Isn't this the best map of the solar system you've seen? http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html It is so hard to imagine those distances.

I think I may be heading to Makanda Illinois, on August 21, for the Eclipse. (Where I live in Michigan, it will only be about 80% - I want the full effect...) In all likelihood, considering my age, and how mobile I may be by the next time there is a full eclipse in the US, I have decided I...

Earth may have been born in a huge flare-up of the young sun by Ken Croswell It’s not easy to make Earth. Most of the explanations for how our planet formed have troubling problems. But if a new idea is right, we can thank a hyperactive young sun for Earth’s existence, plus solve a...

Hello, I am having a hard time deciding the size of a solar array to boil water for a school project. Before putting any thought into the subject I simply thought that I would just take the wattage of the panels and add them up since they are added in both series or parallel and then select an...

Mechanical Engineering Undergrad here: So this didn't seem explicitly like a homework question, but I was wondering how to describe a solar cell in terms of thermodynamics. If I had to model it with the first law of thermodynamics, I would consider it a simple loop of heat/work exchange...

hi guys solar activity has been a love of mine since the early 1970's and am always looking out for new research info :smile: some recent studies and lots of computer animations have come up with new understandings of the mechanisms that instigate CME's and other mass ejections from the sun...

The circuit is intended to control the charging of a 12v 7ah battery by a 10w, 24v volt solar panel.

Hello, Since childhood, I have been wondering why it is not possible to make miniature electric motors with pistons and gas container covered with a very dark (meaning high absorption coefficient over a wide spectral width) material that would translate the energy of sunlight directly into...

Hi, I'm developing a very simple solar system simulator for educational purpose. I had taken from wikipedia mass, velocity of planet and applied universal gravitation formula and applied to all celestial corps. It works well, but when I add the moon... the moon is like a planet, rotating around...

Homework Statement What is the intensity of solar radiation in a place where is the full moon ? I know luminosity of the Sun and Earth's distance from the Sun RE and Moon´s distance from the Earth RM. Trajectory of Earth and Moon are circular. Homework Equations distance of the site from the...

I'm working on a project on solar sails, and I was wondering if you could provide me with some information. I couldn't find much on the internet, except highly technical research. In fact, even the Wikipedia article is too technical for my purposes. If you know about this stuff or have any...

Solar vacuum tubes are tubes covered with a vacuum jacket so that no heat can be dissipated by conduction and convection of air. By this process, we can get pretty high temperature even at very cold temperature. In this video, you can see how very temperature water can be produced by using such...