Abstract

The Earth’s atmosphere influences spacecraft measurements of surface reflectance in a variety of ways. The dominant effects are (1) extinction, which results in attenuation of both incident and emergent radiation, and (2) the introduction of an additive diffuse path radiance field as a result of atmospheric scattering. Since the magnitude of both of these effects is strongly influenced by the atmospheric opacity, determination of this quantity will be an important component of atmospheric correction algorithms.

© 1985 Optical Society of America