Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!cica!iuvax!shirley
From: shirley@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (peter shirley)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Lambert's Law & the Moon
Message-ID: <72605@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Date: 17 Nov 90 21:27:33 GMT
References: <27331@cs.yale.edu>
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington
Lines: 24

musgrave-forest@CS.YALE.EDU (F. Ken Musgrave) writes:



>  Am I correct in a vague memory I seem to have, that the (Earth's) moon is
>supposedly a near-ideal Lambertian reflector?

>  There's somthing fishy here, methinks.

The moon is not lambertian.  If it were, then a full moon would be bright
at the center of the disk, and fade into black at the edges.  Instead,
a full moon is a fairly uniformly colored disk.  If you assume the
lambertian surface has a scattering probability kcos(theta), you might
guess that the moon is just k (scatters in all directions above the
surface with equal probabilities).  I think this will work for a
simple model. 

pete


PS-- I saw some angular reflectance curves in some book I can't find. I think
it was a heat transfer text.  The actual function was pretty funky.

PPS-- Nice pictures in this months CG&A!  (by FKM)