Talk:Atmospheric refraction

CITEREF usage problem
I noticed that this article uses CITEREF format to link to a reference list at the bottom of the article. When I recently added a link using this format I couldn't get my reference link to work. Browsing through the article I found that very few of the CITEREF links in the article actually link to the reference list.

Could someone who knows how this form of citation works (I've never used it before and couldn't find any clear documentation for it) straighten up the existing citations. Alternatively, we may have to rework all the citations in this article. AAAARGH! --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 22:34, 22 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I notice that since my comment, User:Primefac has added a no footnotes tag to the article. That seems to offer a way out; perhaps we should reformat the existing references to footnote style, which are not as difficult to handle. Comments welcome. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:34, 7 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I did not notice the CITEREF tags previously. I will go through and edit the article so that they use the (standard)  tags.Primefac (talk) 17:29, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Terrestrial refraction
This article is a good beginning to a discussion of astronomical refraction. However, it does not discuss the other side of atmospheric refraction, that used in surveying and geodesy called terrestrial refraction. Its interesting that scholarly literature discussing the two aspects of refraction seldom refer to each other, and each has developed its own nomenclature and symbols. I suggest we restructure the article as follows: How does this outline look? --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 20:20, 7 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Introduction (generalized to mention both astronomical and geodetic problems)
 * Astronomical refraction (most of the current article)
 * Terrestrial refraction (to be developed)
 * Classical surveying (bending of light ray)
 * Electronic distance measurement (changing speed of light in medium)
 * GPS measurements
 * Summary, references, etc....


 * OK, I started the revision. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 22:41, 13 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for getting this started. May I suggest a complementary view. The separation between terrestrial and astronominal refraction depends on whether or not the target is located within the atmosphere. Orthogonal to that aspect there is the separation between delay and angle refraction, or perhaps more strictly, ranging and directional refraction. Thus there are four combinations of atmospheric refraction. Do you think that would fit in this article? Fgnievinski (talk) 02:09, 14 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Another point. Although terrestrial refraction sometimes is also called geodetic refraction, space geodesy (satellite geodesy plus VLBI and LLR) obviously is subject to astronomical refraction. Other disciplines concerned with atmospheric refraction are metrology (overlaps with surveying) and astrometry (part of astronomy and overlaps with geodesy, e.g., VLBI). In radio science, atmospheric sciences, and planetary sciences, there is a technique called radio occultation which exploits atmospheric refraction as an environmental remote sensing technique. Finally, in Computer Graphics there is "ray-tracing in inhomogeneous media". Below there are some references I used five years ago. Fgnievinski (talk) 02:19, 14 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Brunner, F. K. (Ed.) (1984). Geodetic refraction: effects of electromagnetic wave propagation through the atmosphere, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 213 pp., ISBN 0387138307, with contributions by P.V. Angus-Leppan et al.
 * Ingensand, H. (2002). “Concepts and solutions to overcome the refraction problem in terrestrial precision measurement.” FIG XXII International Congress, International Federation of Surveyors (FIG), Washington, D.C., April 19–26. http://www.fig.net/pub/fig_2002/Js28/JS28_ingensand.pdf.
 * Lehn, W. H., and S. van der Werf (2005). “Atmospheric refraction: a history.” Applied Optics, Vol. 44, No. 27, pp. 5624–5636,.
 * Yatsenko, A. Yu. (1995). “Exact theory of astronomical refraction for the real atmosphere.” Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement, Vol. 111, pp. 579–586,.
 * Wittmann, A. D. (1997). “Astronomical refraction: formulas for all zenith distances.” Astronomische Nachrichten, Vol. 318, No. 5, pp. 305–312,.
 * Auer, L. H., and E. M. Standish (2000). “Astronomical refraction: Computational method for all zenith angles.” The Astronomical Journal, Vol. 119, No. 5, pp. 2472–2474,.
 * Young, A. T. (2004). “Sunset Science. IV. Low-altitude refraction.” The Astronomical Journal, Vol. 127, No. 6, pp. 3622–3637,.
 * Sovers, O. J., J. L. Fanselow, and C. S. Jacobs (1998). “Astrometry and geodesy with radio interferometry: experiments, models, results.” Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 70, No. 4, pp. 1393–1454,.
 * van der Werf, S. Y. (2003). “Ray tracing and refraction in the modified US1976 atmosphere.” Appl. Opt., Vol. 42, No. 3, pp. 354–366,.
 * Gutierrez, D., F. J. Seron, A. Munoz, and O. Anson (2006). “Simulation of atmospheric phenomena.” Computers & Graphics, Vol. 30, No. 6, pp. 994–1010,.
 * Seron, F. J., D. Gutierrez, G. Gutierrez, and E. Cerezo (2005). “Implementation of a method of curved ray tracing for inhomogeneous atmospheres.” Computers & Graphics, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 95–108,.
 * Nener, B. D., N. Fowkes, and L. Borredon (2003). “Analytical models of optical refraction in the troposphere.” J. Opt. Soc. Am. A, Vol. 20, No. 5, pp. 867–875,.

Units are not clear
The article states: "A further expansion in terms of the third power of the cotangent of the apparent altitude incorporates H0 the height of the homogenous atmosphere in addition to the usual conditions at the observer". Units for H0 are not specified. The formula after that has the expression 1-H0, which means that H0 is dimensionless. I think that the article needs to specify units for H0. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.251.120.129 (talk) 16:25, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I believe the key phrase you're looking for is H0 the height of the homogenous atmosphere - so H0 has units of length. I'll add in some commas to make it more clear that "the height" relates to H0. Primefac (talk) 16:30, 12 January 2017 (UTC)