Question: sunlight on Saturn.

What is the intensity of sunlight at the distance of Saturn? If the
brightness of the Sun on Earth was 100, say, what would its brightness
be on Saturn (on top of the atmosphere, not on the surface, obviously)?

Thanks.

"Michael" wrote in message
oups.com...
What is the intensity of sunlight at the distance of Saturn? If the
brightness of the Sun on Earth was 100, say, what would its brightness
be on Saturn (on top of the atmosphere, not on the surface, obviously)?

Thanks.


Earth's mean distance from the Sun is 1AU. Saturn's is
about 9.5AU . Intensity falls off as the square of the
distance. You should be able to take it from there.

Thanks guys.

Since posting this I've been referred to a web page
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary...aturnfact.html which
answers the question.

It gives the Solar irradience (W/m^2) for the Earth of 1367.6 and for
Saturn 14.9. The ratio of these is 0.011, which corresponds closely
with your values.

And the no-nukes crowd claims we could power a probe to Pluto with
solar. 0.89 W/m^2, meaning ~700 m^2 even assuming 30% efficiency.
Double that to go through the Kuiper Belt.