Remote Sensing Essentials

Laws of Radiation and their relevance in Remote Sensing

Dr. Arun K. Saraf,

Professor
Department of Earth Sciences

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• In order to best make use of the of information that comes to
us via the electromagnetic spectrum, we need to understand
some basic properties of radiation.

• We need to know the fundamental principles describing the

electromagnetic radiation that originates from an object, and
how that radiation travels through space.

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• For electromagnetic radiation, there are four "laws" that
describe the type and amount of energy being emitted by an
object.
• In science, a law is used to describe a body of observations.
• At the time the law is established, no exceptions have been
found that contradict it.
• The difference between a law and a theory is that a law
simply describes something, while a theory tries to explain
"why" something occurs.

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 Planck's Law:
“Every object emits radiation at all times and at all wavelengths”

• As we know that the sun emits visible light

(left image of the Sun), infrared waves, and
ultraviolet waves (right image of the Sun),
emits microwaves, radio waves, and X-rays.
• The sun is like a big nuclear furnace and it
emits all sorts of electromagnetic radiation.
• However, Plank's Law states that every object
emits over the entire electromagnetic
spectrum. Two images of the sun taken at different wavelengths of the electromagnetic
• That means we also emit radiation at all spectrum. The left image shows the sun's emission at a wavelength in the
visible range. The right image is the ultraviolet emission of the sun. Note:
wavelengths -- so does everything around us! colors in these images and the ones above are deceptive. There is no sense
• Some emission may not be in measurable of "color" in spectral regions other than visible light. The use of color in
amount. these "false-color" images is only used as an aid to show radiation intensity
at one particular wavelength. Credit: NASA/JPL

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Planck's Law:
Every physical body spontaneously and continuously emits electromagnetic radiation
and the spectral radiance of a body, Bν describes the amount of energy it emits at
different radiation frequencies.
It is the power emitted per unit area of the body, per unit solid angle of emission, per
unit frequency.
Planck showed that the spectral radiance of a body for frequency ν at absolute
temperature T is given by

where kB is the Boltzmann constant, h is the

Planck constant (6.62 x 10-34J s), and c is the
speed of light in the medium, whether
material or vacuum.
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Planck's Law:
The spectral radiance can also be expressed per unit wavelength λ instead of per unit
frequency.

In this case, it is given by.

Where,
kB is the Boltzmann constant
h is the Planck constant
c is the speed of light in the medium, whether
material or vacuum.

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Planck's law accurately describes
black-body radiation. Shown here are
a family of curves for different
temperatures. The classical (black)
curve diverges from observed
intensity at high frequencies.

Showing how radiated energy emitted

at shorter wavelengths increases
more rapidly with temperature than
energy emitted at longer
wavelengths.
The shorter the wavelength of
radiation, the greater the energy of
each quantum.

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 Implication of Planck’s Law
• The other basic property of radiation is its intensity,
equivalent to the brightness of visible light.
• This may be regarded as either the number of quanta
or the amplitudes of the electric and magnetic fields.
• The more quanta at a particular wavelength, the
greater the energy that is transmitted.
• The energy of a single long-wavelength quantum is
less than that of one at short wavelength.
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 Implication of Planck’s Law
 Consequently, more long-wavelength quanta must fall
on a detector to produce a measurable response
compared with the number of shorter wavelength
quanta that produce the same response.
 In general, therefore, systems aimed at long-
wavelength radiation need to collect radiation either
from a larger target area or over a longer time than
those used for shorter wavelengths.
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 Implication of Planck’s Law
 This has important consequences for the resolution of
remote sensing systems and their ability to
discriminate real objects from systematic noise.
 However, in reality, things are much more
complicated than this, because instruments use
different kinds of detectors at different wavelengths.

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 Stefan-Boltzmann Law
• In nature, all processes that generate radiation are related in
some way to the temperature of the body emitting it.
• All matter in the Universe, even that in the near-perfect
vacuum are above absolute zero (-273.15°C) and emits some
form of radiation.
• Just how much is emitted and the range of its wavelengths is a
complex function both of temperature and the nature of the
body itself.

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 Stefan-Boltzmann Law
• Matter capable of absorbing all electromagnetic energy that it
receives and emitting radiation perfectly according to its
temperature is known as a blackbody.
• The total energy emitted by a blackbody its emittance (H) in W
m-2 is proportional to the fourth power of its absolute
temperature (T in Kelvin or K).
This is the Stefan-Boltzmann Law:
where σ (Sigma) is the Stefan-
H = σT4 Boltzmann constant (5.7 x 10-8 W
m-2 K-4).
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 Wien's Displacement Law
• At any particular temperature, a blackbody emits
radiation with a range of wavelengths.
• However, its absolute temperature determines which
wavelength transmits the maximum amount of
energy. This dominant wavelength (λm in μm) is given
by Wien's Displacement Law:
λm = 2898/T
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 Implication of Wien's Displacement Law
• As temperature increases, total
energy emitted rises very rapidly
and the wavelength carrying
most energy becomes shorter.
• The shape of the curve relating
emittance to wavelength is
important (left figure), and
stems from both the Stefan-
Boltzmann and Wien's Laws.
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 Implication of Wien's Displacement Law

For any temperature there is a

minimum wavelength of
radiation, a nearby wavelength
of maximum emittance and a
long tail towards longer
wavelengths.

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 Implication of Wien's Displacement Law
Thus a black body at 6000 K (i.e.
Sun's surface temperature), does
not emit radiation with
wavelengths shorter than 0.1
µm, has an energy peak at 0.5
µm (in the part of the spectrum
that is visible to us as green), but
emits all wavelengths beyond
that up to about 100 µm.
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 Kirchhoff's Law
• Any grey object (other than a perfect black body) which
receives radiation, disposes off a part of it in reflection and
transmission.
• The absorptivity, reflectivity and transmissivity are each less
than or equal to unity.

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 Kirchhoff's Law
• Kirchoffs law states that the absorptivity (a) of a substance for
radiation of a specific wavelength (λ) is equal to its emissivity
(e) for the same wavelength and is given by the following
equation:
a (λ) = e (λ)

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 Implication of Kirchhoff's Law

• If we want to measure a particular constituent in the

atmosphere (e.g. water vapor), we need to choose a
wavelength that is emitted well by water vapor (otherwise we
wouldn't detect it).
• However, since water vapor readily emits at our chosen
wavelength, it also readily absorbs radiation at this
wavelength, which is going to cause some problems
measurement-wise.

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THANKS

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https://learningweather.psu.edu/node/18

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_law

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