«Optical
distance measurement
at record -
high speed: Microresonator - based optical
frequency combs enable highly - precise optical
distance ranging
at a rate of 100 million measurements per second - publication in Science..»
So the intensity of radiation (
at some
frequency and polarization) changes over
distance, such that, in the direction the intensity is going, it is always approaching the blackbody value (Planck function) for the local temperature; it approaches this quickly if the absorption cross section density is
high; if the cross section density is very
high and the temperature doesn't vary much over
distance, the intensity may be nearly equal to the Planck function for that location; otherwise its value is a weighted average of the Planck function of local temperature extending back over the path in the direction it came from.