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The average mass of the atmosphere is about 5 quadrillion (5 × 10 15) tonnes or 1/1,200,000 the mass of Earth. According to the American National Center for Atmospheric Research , "The total mean mass of the atmosphere is 5.1480 × 10 18 kg with an annual range due to water vapor of 1.2 or 1.5 × 10 15 kg, depending on whether surface pressure ...
In 1998, NASA astrophysicist Yu Wang from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the first time proposed to use the Earth as an atmospheric lens. [2] Wang suggests in his paper that: [3] ''If we could build a space telescope using the Earth's atmosphere as an objective lens the aperture of such space telescope would be the diameter of the earth.
There are many types of ice halos. They are produced by the ice crystals in cirrus or cirrostratus clouds high in the upper troposphere, at an altitude of 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) to 10 kilometres (6.2 mi), or, during very cold weather, by ice crystals called diamond dust drifting in the air at low levels.
The optical atmospheric window is the optical portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that passes through the Earth's atmosphere, excluding its infrared part; [10] although, as mentioned before, the optical spectrum also includes the IR spectrum and thus the optical window could include the infrared window (8 – 14 μm), the latter is ...
Out of an average 340 watts per square meter (W/m 2) of solar irradiance at the top of the atmosphere, about 200 W/m 2 reaches the surface via windows, mostly the optical and infrared. Also, out of about 340 W/m 2 of reflected shortwave (105 W/m 2 ) plus outgoing longwave radiation (235 W/m 2 ), 80-100 W/m 2 exits to space through the infrared ...
Atmospheric refraction of the light from a star is zero in the zenith, less than 1′ (one arc-minute) at 45° apparent altitude, and still only 5.3′ at 10° altitude; it quickly increases as altitude decreases, reaching 9.9′ at 5° altitude, 18.4′ at 2° altitude, and 35.4′ at the horizon; [4] all values are for 10 °C and 1013.25 hPa ...
An atmosphere (from Ancient Greek ἀτμός (atmós) 'vapour, steam' and σφαῖρα (sphaîra) 'sphere') [1] is a layer of gases that envelop an astronomical object, held in place by the gravity of the object. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low.
A 5 km (3.1 mi; 16,000 ft) deep sodium layer is located between 80–105 km (50–65 mi; 262,000–344,000 ft). Made of unbound, non-ionized atoms of sodium, the sodium layer radiates weakly to contribute to the airglow. The sodium has an average concentration of 400,000 atoms per cubic centimetre.