At 42.3 billion candela, the Luxor Sky Beam is the strongest beam of light in the world. Using computer designed, curved mirrors to collect the light from 39 xenon lamps and focus them into one intense, narrow beam, engineers say that a person could read a newspaper by Luxor’s Sky Beam from ten miles up. On a clear night, the Sky Beam is visible up to 275 miles (443 km) away by aircraft at cruising altitude, such as over Los Angeles.
Each of the 39 lamps is a 7,000 watt Xenotech fixture costing about $1,200. The system costs $51 an hour to operate, with $20 per hour of that just for its 315,000 watts of electricity. The beam has operated reliably since first enabled on October 15, 1993, and is an FAA designated navigational landmark for aviators.
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Famous quotes containing the words luxor, sky and/or beam:
“What though the traveler tell us of the ruins of Egypt, are we so sick or idle that we must sacrifice our America and today to some man’s ill-remembered and indolent story? Carnac and Luxor are but names, or if their skeletons remain, still more desert sand and at length a wave of the Mediterranean Sea are needed to wash away the filth that attaches to their grandeur. Carnac! Carnac! here is Carnac for me. I behold the columns of a larger
and purer temple.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn’t want it, they said in their hundred voices, “No, not yet,” and the sky said, “No, not there.””
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“It was at that moment, just after Krug had fallen through the bottom of a confused dream and sat up on the straw with a gasp—and just before his reality, his remembered hideous misfortune could pounce upon him—it was then that I felt a pang of pity for Adam and slid towards him along an inclined beam of pale light—causing instantaneous madness, but at least saving him from the senseless agony of his logical fate.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)