Abstract
Textbooks focus first on the reflection and refraction of light, and later on individual events of emission, absorption, and scattering. In Nature, it often happens that we see light which has undergone these processes many times, sunlight passing through clouds is just one example, related phenomena occur on the visible surfaces of the Sun and stars. The intensity and angular distribution of the light we see tells us not only about the source but also the medium through which it has passed to reach us. This area of science is known as radiative transfer. Its basic features are illustrated in this article, along with some examples.
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Arnab Rai Choudburi, Astrophysics for Physicists, Cambridge, 2010, Chapter on radiation.
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Rajaram Nityananda works at the School of Liberal Studies, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. Earlier, he spent a decade at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics in Pune, and more than two decades at the Raman Research Institute in Bengaluru. He has taught physics and astronomy at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru and the IISERs in Pune and Mohali. He is keenly interested in optics in a broad sense, and more generally, problems, puzzles, paradoxes, analogies, and their role in teaching and understanding physics.
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Nityananda, R. Sun, Sky and Cloud. Reson 20, 1111–1127 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-015-0282-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-015-0282-4