The Effect of Near-Infrared Radiation on Plants
Look at any textbook on botany and you will find this maxim: plants respond to optical radiation in the spectral range of 280 nm to 800 nm. Period, end of discussion. The question is, how was this...
Specifying LED Colors for Horticultural Lighting
Abstract Whereas human vision relies on five opsins as photoreceptors, most plants have a wide variety of photopigments that are responsive to optical radiation from 280 nm to 800 nm. Beyond...
Defining Far-Ultraviolet
In these uncertain times, there is increasingly persuasive evidence that “far-UV” radiation is effective in inactivating the SARS-CoV-2 virus and other pathogens, but without the health risks of...
Visual Glare and CIE 117-1995 – NEMA White Paper
The CIE Unified Glare Rating (UGR) metric has been use by the architectural lighting industry since it was first published by the CIE a quarter-century ago (CIE 117-1995, Discomfort Glare in...
Horticultural Lighting Design and Déjà Vu
The phrase déjà vu translates from French as “already seen,” which nicely describes a current issue with horticultural lighting design. The introduction of LED technology may have kick-started...
Ultraviolet Radiation and Viral Misinformation
Let me begin with a smorgasbord of headlines: 99.9% of Covid-19 virus dead in 30 seconds with UV LEDs, says Tel Aviv research (www.malaysianow.com)UV-emitting LED lights found to kill coronavirus...
Ultraviolet Radiation Terminology
A word of caution: I am going to be annoyingly pedantic here, but with good reason. The lighting industry has a century-long history of introducing unfamiliar technologies using familiar...
Spherical Irradiance and Aerosols
Lighting designers will be familiar with the illuminance of a planar surface, which is measured in lumens per square meter (or foot). The irradiance of a planar surface by a germicidal radiation...
Defining Photosynthetic Photon Efficacy
There has been some discussion online and in presentations recently about the issue of photosynthetic photon flux. The argument goes as follows: Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR) is somewhat...
Designing an Ultraviolet-C Disinfection System
Published 2020/05/29 by the Illuminating Engineering Society as https://www.ies.org/fires/designing-a-uv-c-germicidal-system/. Germicidal lamps emitting ultraviolet-C (UV-C) radiation have been in...
Climate-based Annual Daylight Modelling for Greenhouses with Supplemental Electric Lighting
This is a preprint of a paper presented by the author at the International Society for Horticultural Lighting (ISHS)'s GreenSys 2019 conference in Angers, France in June 2019, and scheduled for...
Greenhouses and Light Pollution
Supplemental electric lighting for greenhouses may be essential for extending the growing season in northern climates, but it comes with a not-so-hidden cost: environmental light pollution. The...
Ultraviolet Disinfection for Consumers
In these unfortunate times, it seems that everyone is looking for ways to help with the COVID-19 crisis. From a lighting designer’s perspective, one solution is obvious: ultraviolet radiation. We...
Circadian Lighting – An Engineer’s Perspective
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng, FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 19/11/14. Whether you call it “circadian lighting,” “biologically effective lighting” or some other name, the...
Light Transmittance through Greenhouse Glazing
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 18/10/01. Look at a greenhouse manufacturer’s product specifications and you will see that the light...
Far-Red Lighting and the Phytochromes
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published 18/06/04. Most LED grow lights feature blue and red LEDs whose peak wavelengths – approximately 450 nm for blue...
The Science of Near-Infrared Lighting
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 18/07/13 There is a common-sense argument being presented in the popular media that since humans evolved under...
Melanopic Green
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng. FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 18/09/03 Numerous medical studies have shown that exposure to blue light at night suppresses the production of...
Solid Angles
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2014/07/26 Do you suffer from math anxiety? A surprising number of us do (e.g., Wigfield 1988). I would...
Understanding Mesopic Photometry
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2013/10/08 If you are involved with outdoor area or roadway lighting design, you will undoubtedly...
Thoughts on Color Rendering
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2014/01/05 UPDATE 14/10/06 - LightingEurope, the "Voice of the Lighting Industry," has just published...
The Kruithof Curve
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2015/01/12 UPDATE 16/04/09 - This metastudy: Fotois, S. 2106. "A Revised Kruithof Graph Based on Empirical...
Sports Lighting Regulations
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2016/04/30 This blog article has a somewhat frustrating history. About a year ago, I was asked...
Solar Illumination
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2015/01/21 Lighting design is based in part on the reasonable assumption that photometric units...
Seeing Ultraviolet
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2015/10/26 UPDATE 15/11/08 - The following text briefly notes that some people can see near-ultraviolet...
Rethinking the Photometric Data File Format
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2017/03/01 If you perform lighting design calculations today, you can thank the efforts of the IES...
Phytochrome and PSS
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2016/12/09 Horticultural lighting is currently one of the fastest-expanding markets in commercial...
Photometry and Photosynthesis
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2014/12/10 UPDATE 15/04/13 -- This article was first published on December 10, 2014. A revised version...
Mobile Light Pollution
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2016/01/21 At first glance, this appears to be an innocuous question: How much light pollution is...
Mesopic Photometry and Statistics
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2014/04/21 One of the joys of statistics is that you can never be proven wrong ... In a previous All...
Light Pollution and Uplight Ratings
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2015/07/20 "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." When Rudyard Kipling...
Cerise365 and DAYSIM
Ian Ashdowna, Chris Jacksonb, Joel Spahnc, Todd Saemischd a. SunTracker Technologies Ltd., Victoria, Canada. b. Lighting Analysts Ltd., London, UK. c, d. Lighting Analysts Inc., Littleton, CO....
Kruithof Revisited
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2015/11/24 A previous blog article -- The Kruithof Curve -- examined the history of the Kruithof curve (Kruithof...
In the Blood
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2014/06/25 We most often think of lighting design in terms of lumens, color temperature, and CRI, but...
In Search of Luminance
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2014/11/18 The IES Lighting Handbook, Tenth Edition (IES 2010), describes luminance as "perhaps the most...
Horticultural Lighting Metrics
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 08/04/2017 UPDATE 17/08/26 - This article was first published on August 25th, 2017 in Urban...
Giving Light
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2014/05/12 Giving light ... this phrase symbolizes a new philosophy of lighting design, a philosophy in the...
Filtered LEDs and Light Pollution
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2016/03/03 UPDATE 2016/03/03 - Revised Figure 6. The problem is astronomical -- the blue light emitted by...
Entraining Circadian Rhythms
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2015/04/21 There is a fascinating research paper called "Colour as a Signal for Entraining the Mammalian...
Daylight Factors
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES,Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2014/03/05 Nine out of ten daylight simulation programs agree ... and therein lies a story worth retelling....
Controlling Multicolor LED Luminaires
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2016/06/11 San Jose, CA, USA: March 31, 2016. LED Engin, Inc. announces the world’s first 7-color, high...
Color Temperature and Outdoor Lighting
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2015/07/22 UPDATE: Sports field lighting analysis added 15/10/12. [An edited version of this article was...
Climate-Based Daylight Modeling
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2016/03/26 daylight, n. The light of day. Apart from having a wonderfully circular definition in...
Botanical Light Pollution
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2016/02/17 Blue-rich light from LED streetlights, we are told, is the nemesis of professional and amateur...
Blue Light Hazards and Television
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2017/05/19 If you have grandchildren, you may be old enough to remember “black and white” (that is,...
Blue Light Hazard… Or Not?
Ian Ashdown, P. Eng., FIES, Senior Scientist, SunTracker Technologies Ltd. Published: 2014/11/05 As a professional lighting designer, you will likely have read about the “blue light hazard”...