does intensity of shadow depend on other factors as well? how do we consider cases where lighting and solid angles are interspersed?
SuryaTalla22
I don't think there is necessarily an intensity associated to a shadow, because a shadow is a lack of light intensity. I'd be interested to see if there are programs that do some kind of shadow tracing instead of ray tracing, and how effective that would be (since it is a nonphysical approach)
Boomaa23
I don't know for sure but I think the effect of seeing a shadow that is "brighter" or "darker" than another shadow mostly has to do with the ambient light that is hitting the same space as the shadow. For example, if we have the sun and I cast a shadow onto the ground using a disc perpendicular with the ground, I'll get a conical shadow. However because some of the light bounces off of the ground next to the conical shadow, it won't appear perfectly dark underneath the shadow.
Alescontrela
A cool aspect of eclipses is the fact that the moon's gravity slightly bends the light coming from the sun. So in some cases you can still see light during a total eclipse.
AlsonC
I wonder how the reflectiveness/opacity of a shape affects the shadow if it affects it at all?
Liaminamerica2
It's interesting that despite their massive differences in size and distance from Earth, the sun and the moon have approximately the same solid angle from our perspective.
yykkcc
I don't know anything about space telescopes but this slide makes me wonder if space telescopes use the concept of solid angles in their design and operation. Surprisingly chatGPT says this concept is indeed involved in this field.
diandestroyer
@AlsonC Since reflective surfaces can cause light to bounce off an object and opacity affects how much light is let through an object it would make sense to me if it highly affected the shadows the object produces. Intuitively to me, more reflective and more transparent objects would create softer and less defined shadows, while less reflective and more opaque objects would create darker and more defined shadows.
does intensity of shadow depend on other factors as well? how do we consider cases where lighting and solid angles are interspersed?
I don't think there is necessarily an intensity associated to a shadow, because a shadow is a lack of light intensity. I'd be interested to see if there are programs that do some kind of shadow tracing instead of ray tracing, and how effective that would be (since it is a nonphysical approach)
I don't know for sure but I think the effect of seeing a shadow that is "brighter" or "darker" than another shadow mostly has to do with the ambient light that is hitting the same space as the shadow. For example, if we have the sun and I cast a shadow onto the ground using a disc perpendicular with the ground, I'll get a conical shadow. However because some of the light bounces off of the ground next to the conical shadow, it won't appear perfectly dark underneath the shadow.
A cool aspect of eclipses is the fact that the moon's gravity slightly bends the light coming from the sun. So in some cases you can still see light during a total eclipse.
I wonder how the reflectiveness/opacity of a shape affects the shadow if it affects it at all?
It's interesting that despite their massive differences in size and distance from Earth, the sun and the moon have approximately the same solid angle from our perspective.
I don't know anything about space telescopes but this slide makes me wonder if space telescopes use the concept of solid angles in their design and operation. Surprisingly chatGPT says this concept is indeed involved in this field.
@AlsonC Since reflective surfaces can cause light to bounce off an object and opacity affects how much light is let through an object it would make sense to me if it highly affected the shadows the object produces. Intuitively to me, more reflective and more transparent objects would create softer and less defined shadows, while less reflective and more opaque objects would create darker and more defined shadows.