An easy-to-use Model for the Optical Thickness and Ambient Illumination within Cometary Dust Comae

We define a procedure which allows estimation of the optical thickness of a cometarydust coma and the ambient illumination of the nucleus for any given comet, if estimatesof the nucleus radius and the dust activity (Afρ) are available. The calculation isperformed for a singly scattering coma with a cos(ϑ) distribution of dust overits day side. We find that the ambient illumination is of the same order as the incidentsunlight if the optical thickness is of order one. The optical thickness increases, all elseequal, linearly with the nucleus radius. Therefore the effect of the presence of the comamay be neglected for small (≈ 1 km diameter) comets, but is important forcomets such as 1P/Halley and Hale–Bopp.