Abstract

Scattering of light by particulate matter in the atmosphere generates a glow or aureol around pointlike sources, such as street lights seen from a distance. A scene can be thought of as an ensemble of pointlike sources or pixels, each having an aureol associated with it. This phenomena causes images of the scene to be smeared; hence, the presence of the scatterers in the path of propa-gation causes loss of image resolution. A compu-tational method was previously reported¹ whereby a Monte-Carlo code coupled with an optics design program was used to generate aureols at the im-age plane of a detector. This procedure now includes a Gaussian MTF for the camera, so that the optics of a camera operating in a scattering environment can be completely simulated.

© 1986 Optical Society of America