Are the Sun's rays reaching us always parallel?

[navneet9431]

My book says that the Sun's rays reaching us are always parallel.

See this image

Are the Sun's rays reaching us always **PARALLEL rays**?

I will be thankful for help!

 

[phinds]

They are not mathematically parallel but for PRACTICAL purposes, yes they are.

 

[navneet9431]

They are not mathematically parallel but for PRACTICAL purposes, yes they are.

But,what is the reason that they are parallel ?
Can you explain with a rough diagram ?

I will be thankful for help!

 

[glappkaeft]

It's just a consequence of the fact that the suns rays comes from the sun and while the sun is very big it is also very far away so the rays comes from approximately the same spot (within 0.5 degrees) in the sky. You could say that it is because the sun is farther away than it is big.

The best diagram of the relative sizes and distances in the solar system I have http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html

 

[Asymptotic]

You may find this blog post (and illustration) by Keith Harrison informative.

 

[Drakkith]

The reason that the Sun's rays are nearly parallel to each other has nothing to do with its size. It is solely the result of how far away the Sun is. Unfortunately I don't have a good diagram available and don't have the time to make one at the moment. I'll try to get back to this tomorrow or something.

 

[navneet9431]

The reason that the Sun's rays are nearly parallel to each other has nothing to do with its size. It is solely the result of how far away the Sun is. Unfortunately I don't have a good diagram available and don't have the time to make one at the moment. I'll try to get back to this tomorrow or something.

Ok!i will wait for your answer!

Thanks.

 

[A.T.]

Are the Sun's rays reaching us always **PARALLEL rays**?

If they were parallel, the sun would be a single point in the sky, not a disc:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_diameter

 

[lekh2003]

Are the Sun's rays reaching us always **PARALLEL rays**?

Practically, yes, but not exactly. Let me give you an analogy which might help.

Imagine a tennis ball machine shooting tennis balls at all angles from the horizontal. These balls can go on forever unless they are caught. If you are standing directly in front of the tennis ball machine, you might be able to catch the tennis balls shooting upwards, directly at you, or at your feet. Simply put, you are catching balls at every angle. No ball's path is parallel.

Now imagine that you are standing 10 kilometers away. The tennis ball machine is still throwing tennis balls towards the floor and even upwards, but these balls probably won't reach you. They are at too extreme angles. Even if they could go on forever and forever, they would never reach you since they aren't facing towards you.

The only balls which you could catch would be the balls coming directly at you. All the balls coming to you are coming at the same angles. Their paths are parallel. For all practical purposes, the balls are parallel. Of course, sometimes the balls could hit your feet and sometimes your head, but this isn't a big enough difference to call the balls "not parallel".

The textbook isn't literally saying that the rays are parallel, it is practically saying that the rays are parallel. I hope that explained it.

 

[FactChecker]

"parallel" means that they are going in exactly the same direction. Any rays which go in straight lines from the Sun to the Earth (93 million miles), must be going in practically the same direction. Rays from the Sun going in any other direction will miss the Earth.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Are the Sun's rays reaching us always **PARALLEL rays**

The Geometry (Basic School stuff) is what counts here - along with a sense of what's practical. The value of the angle between two radial lines is given by the ratio of the separation where they arrive and their length. Comparing the width of even the widest practical conventional telescope with the distance from the Sun gives a ratio that's as near as dammit to Zero so rays from a particular point on the Sun can be regarded as pretty near parallel. Looking at it the other way round; the Sun's image subtends an angle of about 0.5° on Earth, which means that rays from the Sun are up to about half a degree out of parallel. That's near enough parallel for many practical purposes. When you need more accuracy from a measurement (for instance in Astral Navigation) of the Sun's position in the sky then you have to take this half degree into account. In a Solar Oven, the half degree doesn't matter but when you are taking a photo of the Sun (be careful if you ever try this), that half degree is enough to show the Sun as a small disc and not a single point.
This is just one of many useful approximations that we make in our everyday lives- along with the time shown on our watches, the value of g, the temperature of freezing water etc. etc..

 

[Vanadium 50]

The mentors have changed the title from parallel in all caps, but I still want to know what meaning was intended by putting them in all capitals to begin with? Is it to say they are perfectly parallel? Something else? There is some fishing around for what the OP is asking in general.

 

[jtbell]

If the light rays in sunlight reaching a small area on the Earth were all exactly parallel, shadows would have sharp edges. Instead, they're a bit fuzzy. In a solar or lunar eclipse, the sun's shadow doesn't have a sharp edge, but instead has an umbra and a penumbra.

http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast161/Unit2/eclipses.html

This is because the rays from the sun are not all exactly parallel. Nevertheless, for some practical purposes you can consider the rays to be approximately parallel.

 

[phinds]

The reason that the Sun's rays are nearly parallel to each other has nothing to do with its size. It is solely the result of how far away the Sun is.

Strictly speaking, that is absolutely not true. As glappkaeft correctly pointed out, it is due to the relationship between size and distance, with the size being trivial relative to the distance. If the size were substantial relative to the distance, they would not appear parallel. Think about it, @Drakkith. What would be situation be if the sun were the same distance from the Earth (93 million miles), but 50 million miles in diameter? Would the size then be irrelevant?

 

[Andy Resnick]

My book says that the Sun's rays reaching us are always parallel.

See this image <snip>
Are the Sun's rays reaching us always **PARALLEL rays**?

No, because the sun is an extended object, subtending 32 arcminutes. The fallacy that sunlight is collimated leads to the erroneous claim of Archimedes 'death ray' being practical.

 

[sophiecentaur]

The fallacy that sunlight is collimated leads to the erroneous claim of Archimedes 'death ray' being practical.

A google search revealed http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/experiments/deathray/10_ArchimedesResult.html How about that?

It looks as if it was actually possible. If it had really been achieved in the Archimedes incident, even in a half hearted way, it would definitely have impressed the enemy and the story would instantly have been exaggerated. ("Let's get the hell outa here!")They weren't Scientists so they could have believed, from a small area of smouldering timbers, that the whole fleet could have been burned. Warfare at sea, in those days, was a pretty close-up affair and ships moved fairly slowly. The MIT demonstration would possibly have be representative of the scale of the actual event. As a weapon, it would have been a bit specialised and would have needed reliably clear blue Mediterranean skies. So it would not have been suitable for most European engagements. Also, the relative positions of target and mirror would need to have been just right. Strange it was never repeated, apparently - giving justification to the skepticism about it.

 

[Drakkith]

Strictly speaking, that is absolutely not true. As glappkaeft correctly pointed out, it is due to the relationship between size and distance, with the size being trivial relative to the distance. If the size were substantial relative to the distance, they would not appear parallel. Think about it, @Drakkith. What would be situation be if the sun were the same distance from the Earth (93 million miles), but 50 million miles in diameter? Would the size then be irrelevant?

No, because the sun is an extended object, subtending 32 arcminutes. The fallacy that sunlight is collimated leads to the erroneous claim of Archimedes 'death ray' being practical.

Hold on, I think there's some confusion about what "parallel" or "collimated" rays mean in this context. A collimated bundle of rays are parallel to each other, as I'm sure most people understand. However, when we speak of collimated rays, we usually mean a collimated bundle of rays, and this bundle is, as far as I know, always emitted from the same point on the object. I've never read anything talking about a bundle of collimated rays where the rays are emitted from different points on the object except perhaps starlight. However the OP's book is talking about the light from the Sun, not starlight.

For the purposes of this post I use the following definition of a ray bundle: "the portion of a fan of rays, each of which are emitted from the same point on an object, that are captured by an optical system."

The fact that the Sun is an extended object means that while the ray bundles from each point are all approximately collimated (due to the Sun's distance), they are not parallel to each other. The difference in their angles varies by up to about 0.5 degrees for ray bundles emitted from opposite edges of the Sun. The underlined section of the OP's book is correct in that it means that the rays in each bundle of light emitted from the Sun are essentially parallel to each other. Because of this, the image of the Sun will be formed at the mirror's focal point, again, as the book says (focal plane actually, but I'll use focal point to keep things simple). The angular size of the Sun does not affect this. You could quadruple the angular size of the Sun and the image would still be formed at the focal point of the mirror.

However, if the rays in each bundle diverged at up to 0.5 degrees, the image would be shifted away from the mirror and would no longer be formed at the focal point. As the angle is increased, the image is formed further and further away from the mirror, which corresponds to bringing the object closer. Note that bringing an object closer to the mirror also increases its angular size, which highlights the difference in keeping an object at the same distance and increasing its size versus bringing it closer. Both result in an increased angular size, but the former does not affect the position of the image.

@navneet9431, basically, the reason the image of the Sun is formed at the focal point is because of how far away the Sun is. If you were to move closer to the Sun the image would begin to be shifted away from the mirror and the focal point. I hope the following (poor) illustrations help:

The first three pictures show how rays are (or aren't) emitted from the Sun. The picture in your book with all the rays parallel to each other is a simplification. The real situation is more like the 3rd picture, with a fan of rays being emitted from each point and spreading out into space. The 4th picture shows how ray from a single bundle behave when an object is very far away versus when it is nearby. Notice how in the bottom illustration the image is formed further back, past the focal point of the mirror. By the time that ray bundles from the Sun arrive at the Earth, they are a close approximation of the top illustration and the image of the Sun is formed almost exactly at the focal point of the mirror.

Note that in the final image the ray bundles aren't drawn as being collimated, but they should be. I only drew it to show that light emitted from two different points on the Sun are brought to a focus at different locations on the image plane. If we make the object larger without bringing it closer, the size of the image increases, but the location of the image plane does not change. If we instead bring the object closer, the size of the image again increases, but now the rays in each bundle start to become noticeably divergent, like the bottom illustration in picture 4, and the image moves away from the focal point. Also, ignore the unlabeled focal point dot in that final image. It should be drawn at the image plane, but I made a mistake.

 

[sophiecentaur]

the reason the image of the Sun is formed at the focal point

There is no way that an image of the Sun in any normal optics can be regarded as a "point". The focussed image is in the Image Plane and not at a point.
All those diagrams are 'correct', just not all of them are relevant to the question. You can select any rays you choose, depending what you want to know.

I really thing we are over cooking this, in the light of the OP's quoting an elementary book for the question.

 

[Drakkith]

There is no way that an image of the Sun in any normal optics can be regarded as a "point". The focussed image is in the Image Plane and not at a point.

I know. I already addressed this in my post:

Because of this, the image of the Sun will be formed at the mirror's focal point, again, as the book says (focal plane actually, but I'll use focal point to keep things simple).

 

[Drakkith]

All those diagrams are 'correct', just not all of them are relevant to the question. You can select any rays you choose, depending what you want to know.

Yes, but most of the ray choices do not help anyone understand why the rays are parallel, which rays are parallel, or why the image is formed at the focal plane of the mirror, all of which is relevant to what the book is trying to explain.

 

[CWatters]

Light from objects a lot nearer than the sun can also be considered parallel for some practical purposes. For example if you focus a camera lens at infinity you will find that objects a lot closer than the sun still appear acceptably in focus.

Edit: Oh err don't go pointing a camera at the sun as you can ruin it and your eyes.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Hold on, I think there's some confusion about what "parallel" or "collimated" rays mean in this context. A collimated bundle of rays are parallel to each other, as I'm sure most people understand. However, when we speak of collimated rays, we usually mean a collimated bundle of rays, and this bundle is, as far as I know, always emitted from the same point on the object. I've never read anything talking about a bundle of collimated rays where the rays are emitted from different points on the object except perhaps starlight. However the OP's book is talking about the light from the Sun, not starlight.
<snip>

This is (to me), very confusing terminology. A single ray is, in geometrical optics, an elementary thing. "Bundles" of rays (ray fans) are built up and primarily used to quantify etendue and vignetting. Collimated light (plane waves) does not come from starlight per se, but from light emitted by a *point source* located at inifinity, of which non-solar stars are excellent approximations. And clearly, the light we detect from stars does not come from single points of the surface from said stars, even though the detected light is almost perfectly spatially coherent, usable for interferometric purposes.

 

[Andy Resnick]

A google search revealed http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/experiments/deathray/10_ArchimedesResult.html How about that?

Indeed- how about that? It's silliness, is what it is. Until someone points out the flaw in Slyusarev's clear argument, I maintain that the death ray and related 'technologies' like solar concentrators are no different than claiming second law violations.

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/281847.pdf

 

[sophiecentaur]

Indeed- how about that? It's silliness, is what it is. Until someone points out the flaw in Slyusarev's clear argument, I maintain that the death ray and related 'technologies' like solar concentrators are no different than claiming second law violations.

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/281847.pdf

The image size must be what counts because that will dictate the energy flux at the focus for a given aperture. I think the area of the image will be proportional to the f² and you can only compensate for that with a proportionally big aperture area. Isn't this where the f number comes into photography? If the projected distance is small enough then you can make burning happen. There are some massive solar ovens, after all and a ship's hull with a layer of pitch on it would be pretty vulnerable.
Bear mind how history distorts the details, and bear in mind that the observers of such an event don't know about real optics.If the hull of a boat at a distance of ten metres or so can be charred (a big enough reflector) then that's all you need for the story to get accepted.
What's the difference between a Death Ray and a Burning Glass (which does work)? Just the actual distances involved. Magic is seen as magic if it's presented right. The "silliness" is only in extrapolating on what MIT achieved.
Here's another example of the same sort of thing. The devil is in the detail. The plastic only went soft and nothing caught fire.

 

[SF cookie]

It’s actually quite simple:

“Sun's rays reaching us are always parallel”

Parallel implies that the light rays are traveling in the same direction.

In the case of the sun, and any small-scale measurement you might do in your garden, it is an approximation that is so close to being correct that the error is a bit difficult to measure (see my “Yes, but” below…). If the sun was even further away, the rays would be even more close to being parallel.

Now we scale up your measurement so it is no longer just in your garden, we’re also going to think about the light rays that light up all the other planets in the solar system. The planets are not all conveniently lined up in the same direction. Therefore the sun's rays which illuminate them are not all in the same direction as the ones in your garden. In other words light rays from the sun are not all parallel - just how 'un-parallel' they are depends on the scale of your measurement.

So yes, the ones that reach us (in our garden) are for practical purposes parallel – but remember it is only an approximation.

Yes, but:
Some have brought up the question of whether the sun should be thought of as a point-source of light. It isn’t. It covers roughly the same amount of sky as the moon. Consequently, if you look at the sun through a suitable solar filter*, you can see that there is a top and bottom, and a left and right side. The light which reaches you in your garden is coming to you from slightly different angles depending on where on the sun’s disk it came from. The difference from one side to the other is about half a degree.

* Warning – you can suffer serious eye damage if you don’t use a suitable solar filter.

 

[parshyaa]

These are the only rays which are coming in the direction of our planet, rest of them are not in our frame, since sun is too far and our planet is so small in comparison to sun , thus only rays coming from the middle part reaches Earth and they are almost parallel as you can frame from the rough diagram

 

[A.T.]

 

[parshyaa]

View attachment 216125

Thats due to atmospheric refractions, disturbance in their path

 

[A.T.]

Thats due to atmospheric refractions, disturbance in their path

Nope. Seen from orbit the sun still has an angular size of ~0.5°.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Thats due to atmospheric refractions, disturbance in their path

If that were true then we would see a fuzzy ball and not an object with sharp, well defined edges. Also, all stars would look the same as a fuzzy Sun but fainter.
But why are we even bothering to discuss the book in the OP's OP? That diagram is rubbish and doesn't show what it means to say (at lease I hope it means something different from the diagram). It wouldn't be the only book with Bad Science in it. I had a Childrens' Encyplopedia in the 1950s with pictures of the surfaces of Jupiter and Saturn that had mountains.

 

[ZapperZ]

Wow!

This was a question that was asked at such an elementary level, but it has taken off in a way too-complicated direction.

To the OP: It is considered to be paralleled in the same sense that we consider Earth to be "flat" and "g" to be a constant for most things done on the surface of the earth. It means that if you use the light from the sun in the optics experiments at your level, the result will be practically identical to those that I solve mathematically for "parallel" light. The "wave fronts" of light coming from the Earth are considered parallel by the time it gets to earth.

Think of it this way. If you drop a pebble into water and look at the circular wave fronts, how would they look as the move further and further away from where they are created? The father away they go, the "flatter" they will tend to appear until at some point, their curvature will no longer be significant. The wave fronts will now appear as if they are parallel and moving in a straight line at all points.

It doesn't take light just from the sun to be this way. In my intro physics labs, it is enough that the light source is at one end of the room. Our basic optics experiments give accurate-enough results if we assume that the light source is "infinitely" far away so that the wave fronts are parallel.

Zz.

 

[Shane Kennedy]

If you look at the sun (through a filter), rays from the left side enter your eye, and rays from the right side enter your eye. Those rays are not parallel. Practically, they radiate in all directions from the sun. Only from our perspective are they almost parallel.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Those rays are not parallel.

All rays from one location on the surface can be treated as parallel with no error. But rays from different locations are definitely not parallel. A half degree of difference in arrival angle is very significant. I reckon a high performance racing engine with bores with half a degree of taper would not last long. The poor rings would be knackered pretty soon. Half a degree is like a Barn Door!

 

[russ_watters]

Wow!

This was a question that was asked at such an elementary level, but it has taken off in a way too-complicated direction.

Agreed! I was shocked this thread made it to page 2!

This is not a situation where we can say 99% of the time they can be assumed to be parallel because there are a lot of situations where the fact that they are not parallel is important. But it isn't that difficult to differentiate.

 

[Eric Bretschneider]

OOOOOOOKKKKKKKKKKKK - another bad science textbook.

In order for the rays to be "effectively" parallel you need a point source that is a long ways away or a laser.
The fact that the sun is a source that is about 0.5 degree across means that light from the sun will diverge at about that same angle. If sunlight were parallel then the path of a solar eclipse would about 2100 miles wide not 100-200 miles wide.

The surface of the sun is a Lambertian emitter. Each part emits light in all directions with an intensity proportional to the cosine of the angle to the surface. I think that's the problem with the textbook is that it assumed light from the sun is emitted perpendicularly to the surface.

Lasers are nearly parallel beams, but have a small divergence. For practical purposes the light from a laser is parallel.