Estimation of Visibility from Satellite Imagery

This work examines methods for estimating visibility from satellite imagery, which employ information from the spatial and frequency domains. Properties of luminance and contrast images are derived and compared in both domains. In the past, contrast has traditionally been employed to measure the effects of atmospheric attenuation on visibility. However, the derived results show that the luminance image in either domain contains all the necessary information to calculate standard visibility parameters. Two methods are presented which estimate representative parameters.