125 YEARS OF RAYLEIGH-SCATTERING IN THE STUDY OF THE PLANETARY-ATMOSPHERES

After describing the pioneering work of Lord Rayleigh in 1871 on the p olarization and colour of the light from the sky, and its application by C.V.Raman to the colour of the sea in Section I, the solution of th e problem of multiple scattering in a conservative Rayleigh scattering atmosphere by S.Chandrasekhar is presented in Section 2. Application of these results to the study of the illumination and polarization of radiation reflected by a semi-infinite atmosphere like that of Venus a nd the study of the same properties of the radiation transmitted and r eflected by a finite atmosphere like that of the earth's have been dis cussed in Section 3. This is followed by a similar study of the radiat ion coming out of the non-conservative semi-infinite and finite Raylei gh scattering atmospheres in Section 4. The application of the non-con servative scattering to the investigation of the intensity and polariz ation profiles of the gaseous absorption lines produced in such atmosp heres is discussed in Section 5. The paper ends with a brief mention o f the role of Mie scattering in the planetary atmospheres in Section 6 .