Space vampires: How far from the sun before a vamp could walk in daylight, safely?

I’ve had a question burning in the back of my mind for awhile, now, and I thought I’d finally air it out.

Leaving aside magical complications* for the moment, how far away from our sun in our solar system would a vampire have to get before he could face it, safely?

Here’s my thinking: the sun is a star, but starlight doesn’t burn vampires. Moonlight, even a full moon, doesn’t burn vampires, even though it’s just reflected sunlight. Ergo, if a vampire got as far away in space that the he only received as much light from the sun equivilant to what you’d get on Earth’s surface at night during a full moon (maybe even a bit more—there’s been quite a few depictions of vamps running around at dusk, where the ambiant light is still a bit more than moonlight), he could be exposed to direct sunlight without fear of injury.

My question is…how far away would he have to be? Could a vampire on Mars survive on the surface in shirtsleeves, or at least in front of a clear window? How about orbiting one of the gas giants, or even Pluto?

I’m guessing there’s at least one, maybe even two people here that’d be interested in this one—I eagerly await their reply.
*I think “Buffy” used an angle like this; “It doesn’t hurt us because of the kind of light, it hurts us because it’s the sun.” Yeah, sure thing, 'mac.

It might not be the amount of sunlight per se, but some other quality of OUR sun that doesn’t reflect via the moon.

We generally keep the vampire science threads over in Cafe Society. Here, I’ll move it for you.

Gfactor, General Question Moderator

The scientific answer is…5 billion miles. My post is my cite…

Sadly, the answer to your question may never be known as the Federation Science Council has forbidden tests on actual vampires. As if those blood suckers have rights!

This is complicated by the fact that earth’s atmosphere blocks out a large quantity of solar radiation. Assuming that it’s some quantity of the radiation that burns the vamp, a vampire in orbit exposed to the sun would be considerably worse off than a vampire at high noon on earth.

My personal theory is that vampires are burnt by UV rays. So the real question is what would be the minimum amount of UV rays that a vampire could be exposed to and still survive. Maybe all vampires need is Suntan lotion with SPF 45. :wink:

Measured in terms of stellar magnitudes, the sun is magnitude −26.73 and the full moon is magnitude −12.6, for a difference of 14.13. Each five magnitudes corresponds to a multiple of 100x brightness; thus, this difference corresponds to a factor of 100^(14.13/5), or about 450,000. Thus, the sun would appear as bright as the full moon appears on Earth at a distance of sqrt(450000), or about 670 AU (about 3.8 light-days). By comparison, the orbit of Neptune is about 30 AU away from the Sun.

Well, if you’re talking Blade-style vampires, then apparently it’s the UV that does the trick.

I know the atmosphere filters quite a bit of UV, and (IIRC) the moon doesn’t reflect much of it, if any at all. Which would explain the nightcrawler habits, the lack of distress from starlight, etc. Further, a good dose of SPF 500 would let them wander around at noon (again, see Blade as an example).

Trouble is, I don’t think UV is filtered or absorbed at all by the, uh, vacuum of space. Some of it might get lost to microscopic space-dust, but the majority will just keep on truckin’, just like the rest of the wavelengths. So, I’d say that a vampire in space* will bubble and boil regardless of distance from the sun/any star, unless there’s something around him to block the UV.

Which, I suppose, means that he’d still go poof even behind the Earth or the Moon – all those stars are like a giant microwave oven, far as he’s concerned. You can’t hide from them all.

** let’s ignore the question of pressure – or lack thereof – here :)*

My assertion is that Vampires are burned by psychology. They only have to be far enough away from the sun that it’s unrecognizable as “the sun” in order to trick their psyche.

Since vampires don’t exist, you can posit whatever characteristics for them you want. However, if we have to assume a sort of generic conglomeration of cinematic and tv vampires, my guess would be that they’d have to be far enough away from the Sun for it to appear as just a bright star.

(Bram Stoker’s Dracula walked around in daylight with no trouble; I don’t really know if the “vampires destroyed by sunlight” meme predates the movie Nosferatu in 1922.)

I believe that data is only correct for the Aldeberon system.

Well, if there were far enough out in the System not to be hurt by the Sun, they’d also be frozen solid from liquid air level temps, or colder.

Break em to sand with a rock, then.

Is there another made up, pulled out of our ass system? I did make the kessel run in less than 12 parsecs after all, oops did I say too much?I mean considering somebody asking for a factual answer about vampires deserves the answer they get. Not that anybody would ridicule them now that it has been moved to CS.

But that assumes that the brightness of the full moon is as much as they can stand, which I don’t think is necessarily warranted.

Oh, come on. This is exactly the kind of thing we answer.

The real question is how far they have to be away from a cross before being affected.

And I answered it in post#4. Prove me wrong. Or right it’s all the same…

askeptic, I think that’s a bit much, considering that the OP did suggest a scientific framework with which to answer the question. Which is in fact exactly how Steve MB did answer it. It is admittedly only a lower bound, since we don’t know how a vampire would react to a light source intermediate between a full moon and direct Earthly sunlight.

Another possibility is that vampires are vulnerable to whatever the primary natural light source is at their location. If this is the case, then it wouldn’t even be simply a question of distance, but of what other objects are around. A vampire living on one of Jupiter’s moons might be vulnerable to jovelight, but not to sunlight, while a vampire a lightyear or two away in interstellar space might still be vulnerable to old Sol.

God, I hope you are kidding. Vampires are made up by the authors of individual tales they are subject to whatever laws the author chooses.
I hope you are not suggesting they are real and subject to actual physical laws. They are not and therefore they are subject to whatever rules or laws any particular author chooses to give them. As a factual question it is a non-starter.

meep! meep!

OOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooo ﻹ

you guys make it too complicated. if it’s bright enough to be day it hurts, if it’s so far day is night it’s ok. question is, which planet’s day is like our nights?