How much candlepower does the sun give out?

Question

What I'm asking is, how bright is the sun compared to a candle, from the perspective of someone standing on the earth.

Answer 1

To someone on the Earth, at latitude 40 degrees or so, sunlight is about 250 Watts per square meter. A standard candle, at a distance of 1 meter, gives out 1/670 Watts per square meter.

So the sun is 250 x 670 = about 168,000 times brighter.

A standard candle gives out about 1/53.3 = 0.01876 Watts.

Answer 2

That depends, morning high noon or evening.
Remember the light from the Sun is defused by out air moisture and pollution.
I'm not sure but I think it's about a thousand candlepower on the Surface, but this depends on many things.

Answer 3

1575000000000000000000000000
1.57 octillin

lets break that number down a little.

if you stacked that many dimes on top of each other it would reach the sun and back to earth 1,244,298,778,949 times.

hope that puts things into perspective
(the source in which II found it was written in 1927)
http://books.google.com/books?id=dZYAAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA274&lpg=PA274&dq=%22the+sun%22+candlepower&source=web&ots=MaUSQUgFsK&sig=fL82C9GeyOrKyiKTNwP8x_BieUE#PPR3,M1

Answer 4

2 1/2. But they have to be DAMN BIG CANDLES!