Dear Robert, I know you are busy, so here is the condensed version: My experiments indicate that the size and brightness of a reflection of the Sun from a shiny sphere is a function of the radius of the reflecting sphere, and the OBSERVER's distance to the reflecting sphere, exactly as you said. But here is the interesting part: The phase angle DOES appear to affect the reflection, but the wacky bit is that the reflection gets BIGGER as the angle gets shallower. Meaning, with the sun at my back, the reflection is a small dot near the center of the sphere as described. Turning around, with the Sun reflecting off of the sphere, the image spreads out into a crescent as it gets nearer the edge (shallower angle) and gets brighter. My experiment concludes that the phase angle of a reflection DOES affect the size, shape and brightness of a reflection from a shiny sphere, but in the opposite way than I expected. Any comments? -- Tom Troszak, Asheville, NC, USA 35.601 N, -82.554 W mailto:tom@bullhammer.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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