Blue Moon: Is This a Property of Background Aerosol?

2010

Stellar extinction measurements made at three astronomical observatories showed that on ~50% of the nights the extinction due to aerosol light scattering increased rather than decreased with increasing wavelength (anomalous extinction) for wavelengths close to 500 nm. This extinction behavior is analyzed in this paper and limits are established for the aerosol characteristics necessary for this phenomenon to exist, including geometric standard deviations, imaginary part of refractive index, mean radius, and gaseous NO(2).