Methods for Calculating Atmospheric Refraction and its Perturbation.

摘要

Equations for tracing rays through the atmosphere in spherical coordinates are developed including lateral refraction effects. The spherically symmetrical case is considered in greater detail and equations for the error in altitude angle are obtained. Perturbation analysis is also performed to obtain the deviations in the refraction error due to differences in some standard atmospheric profile and the actual atmospheric profile. In addition, numerical expressions for evaluating the integrals are given, and some simple standard atmospheric models are discussed.