re temperature of the dark sky in article c o t a o zoo toronto edu henry zoo toronto edu henry spencer writes does anyone have a reference something i can look up not just your own recollections i have a few of those myself on the temperature of the night sky as seen from space note i am not talking about the temperature of the microwave background radiation there are more things in the sky than just the mbr what i m after is total blackbody temperature what a thermal radiator would see disregarding or shielding against the sun and nearby large warm objects my dim recollection is that the net effective temperature is substantially higher than that of the mbr once you figure in things like stars and the zodiacal light but i d like numbers svr resembles a high speed collision henry spencer u of toronto zoology between svr and sunos dick dunn henry zoo toronto edu utzoo henry it s not quite what you were asking but a few years ago i helped some ee remote sensing people run some experiments on the microwave emmissivity of ice they used the sky for a background calibration source they said that from earth s surface the sky looks like a k blackbody dr kurt hillig dept of chemistry i always tell the phone university of michigan absolute truth x khillig umich edu ann arbor mi as i see it hillig chem lsa umich edu
