Abstract
Noctilucent clouds are seen because they scatter sunlight. To understand and to interpret the observations, it is necessary to consider in some detail what is involved in this scattering. It has become clear that noctilucent clouds are very thin and very sparse assemblies of scatterers. The cloud particles, whatever they may be, scatter light as individuals not as an assembly. Furthermore, there is a negligible amount of rescattering in the cloud: having been once scattered, sunlight emerges from the cloud without further scattering.
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© 1989 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Gadsden, M., Schröder, W. (1989). Observations from Ground Level. In: Noctilucent Clouds. Physics and Chemistry in Space Planetology, vol 18. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-48626-5_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-48626-5_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-48628-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-48626-5
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