Mercury turns out to be similar to the Moon at 0.119, while Venus’ albedo is by far the highest of all planetary bodies in the Solar System at 0.90. So not only does Mercury receive four times as much energy-per-unit-area, it absorbs nearly nine times as much of the sunlight it receives as Venus does!

poles

The lowest latitudes get the most energy from the Sun. The highest latitudes get the least. The difference in solar energy received at different latitudes drives atmospheric circulation.

equator

ultraviolet rays

[/caption]Radiation from the Sun, which is more popularly known as sunlight, is a mixture of electromagnetic waves ranging from infrared (IR) to ultraviolet rays (UV). It of course includes visible light, which is in between IR and UV in the electromagnetic spectrum.

No. The light source may get warm or even hot, but UV light does not transmit heat. Heat is transmitted in the lower frequencies of Infrared (IR). While all light, in fact the entire EM spectrum carries energy, not all frequencies produce or transmit heat.

When visible light is absorbed by an object, the object converts the short wavelength light into long wavelength heat. This causes the object to get warmer. But this is only part of the story as to why Earth is warm. When absorbed, the short wavelength sunlight is converted to long wavelength heat.

Yes, we can have light without heat. The light from such reactions is called cool light. Such chemical reactions are called chemiluminescent reactions, the most familiar of which occur in living organisms. Fireflies produce light without heat through this reaction.

Black

White, silver, and other light colors are coolest, reflecting about 60 percent of sunlight but there are dark “cool” colors that can also stay cooler than traditional dark colors.

Dark matt surfaces are better at absorbing heat energy than light shiny surfaces….Key points.

Developed for NASA to reduce incidental glare on telescopes and other equipment used to study faint, distant stars, Singularity Black sucks up 98.5 percent of the light that enters it. A typical matte black paint absorbs only about 80 percent.

Another big question in the summer clothing world is color: dark or light? The outer layer of fabric does get hotter because the black color absorbs more heat. And that heat doesn’t get transmitted to the skin because of the thick fabric. But thin black clothing transmits that heat to the skin, making a person hotter.

Pigments or dyes that absorb light rather than reflect it back to the eye “look black”. A black pigment can, however, result from a combination of several pigments that collectively absorb all colors.

A black object absorbs all wavelengths of light and converts them into heat, so the object gets warm. A white object reflects all wavelengths of light, so the light is not converted into heat and the temperature of the object does not increase noticeably.

Black objects absorb all colours so no light is reflected.