About Collimation Angle

Direct sunlight as seen from the Earth is determined by the diameter of the Sun and the distance from the Sun to the Earth (Figure 1). Using the same principle, we use the Collimation Half Angle (CHA) concept to evaluate parallelism of light in the case of solar simulators (Figure 2).

The CHA of the solar simulator is calculated as shown in Figure 3.

Angular diameter of SUN: 32 arc min or 1920 arc sec or 0.5 degrees
Collimation angle of solar simulator
Calculation of Collimation Half Angle (CHA)

a: Working distance (from solar simulator to irradiation surface).

b: Radius of exit aperture.