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Physics LibreTexts

2: Albedo

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Albedo is a measurement, expressed as a fraction, of the amount of radiation scattered from a surface or an object. In this chapter we describe those albedos most commonly used and describe methods to calculate them in cases where analytical solutions are difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. In order to do this we introduce two more photometric quantities, namely exitance M and intensity I. A comprehensive summary of the photometric quantities is also presented.

Thumbnail: Surface of Mercury (Public Domain; NASA).


This page titled 2: Albedo is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Max Fairbairn & Jeremy Tatum via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.

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