Astronomy Stack Exchange
Astronomy Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [atmospheric-effects]

Questions about the influences of Earth's atmosphere on astronomical observations.

Effects of an atmosphere on the propagation of waves and information through it (astronomical seeing, light pollution, observations, life, etc.) For questions about the atmospheres themselves around non-stellar objects use the tag "planetary-atmosphere" and for those around stellar-objects; "stellar-atmosphere".

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Oldest Reference to Astronomical Seeing

I'm writing a paper on astronomical seeing. Sir Isaac Newton identified both the phenomenon and origin of astronomical seeing in his Opticks. He writes: If the Theory of making Telescopes could at length be fully brought into Practice, yet there…
Steve
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What is meant by "there is no refraction at the zenith"?

Wikipedia states: Atmospheric refraction of the light from a star is zero in the zenith and other sources seem to agree. I don't see why this should be so. Consider a situation in which air gets warmer from left to right. Then light should curve…
Mark Eichenlaub
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Source of red in earth's photographs

What is the red in this picture of earth? At first we thought it might be pollution, but Jupiter also has red. Picture source: https://education.seattlepi.com/primary-movements-motions-earth-4701.html
Bookaholic
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Public Data Set on Atmospheric Absorbtion / Extinction

Is there a publicly available data set for mean atmospheric absorption / extinction? I would like to be able to process and plot a graph similar to this image from NASA on wiki commons. The HITRAN database appears to offer individual lines and might…
Steve
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