Feb 18, 2025 · The overall optical depth of a cloud of gas is an important number. If tells us right away if the cloud falls into one of two useful regimes: optically thin: \(\mathbf{\tau << 1}\)

Thus optical depth can also be defined by \(\ln (I^0/I)\). While the optical depth \(\ln (I^0 /I)\) is generally used to describe how opaque a stellar atmosphere or an interstellar cloud is, when …

Dec 11, 2018 · Optical depth is often computed as: {\displaystyle \tau _ {\nu }=n\sigma _ {\nu }s=N\sigma _ {\nu }\,\!} where , the column density, is in and is the # of extinguishers per unit …

Compare the optical depth of the Earth's atmosphere to that of the Sun's photosphere you calculated earlier. Now look at figure 9.10 in your textbook, which shows optical depth as a …

Optical depth describes how much absorption occurs when light travels through an absorbing medium (for example, a planetary atmosphere or a interstellar dust cloud). Think about light …

Optical depth is a crucial concept for radiative transfer and one should develop some intuition about it to understand radiative transfer in the atmosphere. Continuing with the example …

Apr 6, 2024 · How is Optical Depth Calculated? The optical depth of a medium is typically calculated using the formula: [ tau = -ln (I/I_0) ] This formula essentially measures the …

Optical depth gives a measure of how opaque a medium is to radiation passing through it. It is measured along the vertical optical path dz and, in the planetary science convention, is …

Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) is the measure of aerosols (e.g., urban haze, smoke particles, desert dust, sea salt) distributed within a column of air from the instrument (Earth's surface) to …

The optical depth is a coefficient that quantifies impediments to propagation experienced by photons, the elementary carriers of the electromagnetic force, as they propagate through a …