re temperature of the dark sky 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 henry if i read you correctly you may be asking if i put a blackbody in interstellar space disregarding the sun and nearby large warm objects what termperature will it reach in thermal equilibrium with the ambient radiation field if that s the case let me point out that interstellar dust and molecules provide many instances of things that are well not too far from being blackbodies many different observations including iras and cobe have determined that interstellar dust grain temperatures can range from k to k you might look in a conference proceedings interstellar processes ed d j hollenbach and h a thronson jr published in try the articles by tielens et al seab and black inside the disk of the galaxy the temperature varies quite a bit from place to place how close are you to the nearest ob association i would guess outside the galaxy of course things aren t so varied i hope this is what you were looking for michael richmond this is the heart that broke my finger richmond astro princeton edu
