Rayleigh Atmosphere

This is a full sky view (2 Pi steradians) for an observer on the surface of the Earth with the Sun at 45 degrees above the horizon (small white dot in the image above). This is the kind of image one would expect with a fisheye lens looking straight up with no clouds. Rayleigh extinction coefficients and a Rayleigh phase function were used in this plane parallel model. Note how the sky is brighter near the horizon as seen in nature. The color was found by mapping CIE XYZ to RGB. This image was created using a FORTRAN program.