Appearance of the Sun and the Moon seen through clouds

If the Sun can be seen at all through thin clouds it usually has a sharp edge, although occasionally it appears fuzzy, especially through altostratus, but rarely, if ever, through fog. Experiments with suspensions of polystyrene spheres of different sizes and optical thicknesses suggest that the range of cloud optical thicknesses over which a fuzzy Sun is seen increases with particle size. Nonsphericity, turbulence, and cloud horizontal inhomogeneity are not necessary for fuzziness. A possible explanation for what is observed is that, for a given optical thickness, the modulation contrast function of a cloud decreases more rapidly with increasing frequency the greater the particle size. Consequently the transition from optical thicknesses for which contrast is above the contrast threshold at all spatial frequencies to optical thicknesses for which contrast is below the threshold at high frequencies is sufficiently gradual to permit fuzziness of the Sun to be observed through clouds of constantly changing opt cal thickness.