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The emissivity of a material (usually written ε) is the ratio of energy radiated by a particular material to energy radiated by a black body at the same temperature. It is a measure of a material's ability to radiate absorbed energy. A true black body would have an ε = 1 while any real object would have ε < 1. Emissivity is a dimensionless quantity (does not have units). In general, the duller and blacker a material is, the closer its emissivity is to 1. The more reflective a material is, the lower its emissivity. Highly polished silver has an emissivity of about 0.02.
[edit] ExplanationEmissivity depends on factors such as temperature, emission angle, and wavelength. A typical engineering assumption is to assume that a surface's spectral emissivity and absorptivity do not depend on wavelength, so that the emissivity is a constant. This is known as the grey body assumption. When dealing with non-black surfaces, the deviations from ideal black body behavior are determined by both the geometrical structure and the chemical composition, and follow Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation: emissivity equals absorptivity (for an object in thermal equilibrium), so that an object that does not absorb all incident light will also emit less radiation than an ideal black body. [edit] Emissivity of earth's atmosphereThe emissivity of Earth's atmosphere varies according to cloud cover and the concentration of gases that absorb and emit energy in the thermal infrared (i.e., wavelengths around 8 to 14 micrometres). These gases are often called greenhouse gases, from their role in the greenhouse effect. The main naturally-occurring greenhouse gases are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and ozone. The major constituents of the atmosphere, N2 and O2, do not absorb or emit in the thermal infrared. [edit] Astrophysical graybodyThe monochromatic flux density radiated by a greybody at frequency ν through solid angle dΩ is given by Fν = Bν(T)QνdΩ where Bν is the Planck function for a blackbody at temperature T and emissivity Qν. For a uniform medium of optical depth τν radiative transfer means that the radiation will be reduced by a factor e − τ giving . The optical depth is often approximated by the ratio of the emitting frequency to the frequency where τ = 1 all raised to an exponent β. For cold dust clouds in the interstellar medium β is approximately two. Therefore Q becomes,
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