For Space.com, William Worrall compiled ‘10 Christmas space facts that you probably didn’t know‘ and, suffice to say, I didn’t know any of them so well done. Here’s one of them for the ‘you can see it from space’ crowd:
6. It would take 2,683 LED Christmas lights for your house to be visible from space
If you’ve ever seen the Christmas film Deck the Halls, starring Matthew Broderick and Danny DeVito, then you’ll be familiar with this fact. In the movie, DeVito’s character tries to make his house visible from space with a huge Christmas lights display. The film inspired researchers at the University of Leicester, so they decided to figure out exactly how many lights you’d need.
The magic number for your house to be visible from the ISS would be 2,683 LED lights. Researchers calculated the number using the average luminosity of store-bought LED Christmas lights, but admitted that the number also relies on there being no light pollution at all, which is highly unlikely. Ryan Bradley-Evans, one of the students who took part in the research, said: “Although we oversimplified the factors involved, it was great to see this film hold-up to the physics involved as often this is not the case, and who knows, maybe somebody, someday, reading this will actually try it.”
And did you know that the first on-screen appearance of Mrs. Claus was in the 1964 sci-fi Christmas comedy, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians?