Ultraviolet Light

light · invisible · sun

Invisible sunlight. Ultraviolet light is radiation that comes from the sun, but you can't see it with your eyes because it has wavelengths too short for human vision. It makes up about 10% of all the energy the sun sends to Earth.

Beyond rainbow colors. If you could see ultraviolet light, it would sit right beyond the violet end of the rainbow where visible light ends. It's longer than X-rays but shorter than the colors you can actually see.

Created by many sources. While the sun produces ultraviolet light naturally, humans can make it too using electric arcs, specialized lamps like mercury-vapor lamps, tanning beds, and even black lights at parties.

Extreme ultraviolet exists. The shortest ultraviolet wavelengths, called extreme ultraviolet, are so powerful they share some properties with X-rays and are blocked by Earth's atmosphere before reaching the ground.