Best time of day to get sun

mikedublin

Just wondering would any one know : between what hours are the best for getting the sun in Ireland ?

I love the sun and on a day like yesterday I was trying to be out in it as much as possible - only I wonder if the sun is strongest around 12 noon or is it later on ? And are there any websites you can check to see between what hours the sun is at its strongest on a particular day ?

maquiladora

Sun is at its strongest during midday hours. UV is the measure of the strength of solar radiation. UV forecast for Dublin here : http://www.meteovista.co.uk/Europe/Ireland/Sunpower-Dublin/4416961
It all depends on weather conditions of course, you could get better sun in the evening if its been overcast at midday.

Alexis Sanchez

Between 1 and 2 o'clock for Ireland, but it depends on the time of the year. It's always half-way between sunrise and sunset.

It's midday for tropical regions because they get 12 hours of sunshine from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

highdef

If what you are looking for is when the sun is strongest so you get the best tan (or most burnt!), then you want to be out in and around "high noon", which is when the sun is at it's highest point in the sky and therefore has the most solar radiation.
As we have not moved to summer time just yet, it's earlier than it will be from next Sunday and from then till the end of October. Looking at timeanddate.com, high noon was at 12:32 today and by Saturday it is 12:30. Sunday (which is BST), it is 13:30. From then till the end of summer it generally varies from around 13:20 to 13:30, all of these being local times for Dublin.
So if you have decent SPF applied and plan to spend say 4 hours sunbathing beneath a totally clear sky in Ireland, head out around 11:30 and come back in around 15:30.....add about 15 minutes or so if you are in the west.
Having said all that, the highest temperatures during summer time warm spells very often occur late in the afternoon, frequently between 16:00 and 17:00 or even later. This is due to the latency in the build of of heat in the land.....although you can be out in the sun after 17:00 and feel your neck "burn", this is more to the fact that the actual heat is greater. Any visual burning this late in the day is much less severe than earlier in the day.

During the summer months, the strength of the sun (with regards to solar radiation leading to burning of the skin) at 17:00 is roughly equivalent to the strength of it at around 10:00.

How warm/hot you actually feel with regards to the warmth of the sun on your skin has little/no bearing on how much radiation (and therefore burning of the skin) is getting to your skin.

This is well explained by the fact that skiers with no SPF applied in places like Andorra/The Alps during late Spring/Early Summer will sizzle under the very strong sun, even if they are in snow fields....in fact the snow cover makes it even worse

gerrybhoy

I stopped buying that rag years ago, I prefer the Star myself I usually get this around 7.30 in the morning on the way to graft

cavedave

There is a lot more hours of sunshine in Summer than in Winter. :eek:

Sunshine hours are a lot more variable than temperature and even wind.


The code I used to make this graph is here

ch750536

Just for fun info:

Sunlight is required to make vitamin d in humans. The sun is now strong enough for 20 mins a day production if you walk around topless.

At the peak we produce D for about 6 hrs.

We produce no D between October and March

Alexis Sanchez

ch750536 wrote: »

Just for fun info:

Sunlight is required to make vitamin d in humans. The sun is now strong enough for 20 mins a day production if you walk around topless.

At the peak we produce D for about 6 hrs.

We produce no D between October and March

On top of that, if we don't get enough vitamin D, we could develop rickets. Because of this, black people need vitamin D supplements when living in regions with dim sunlight.

Humans originated from central Africa and we were all black, but due to the dim sunlight in Europe, Europeans evolved to have lighter skin to make us more sensative to sunlight, as that prevented us from developing rickets.