The quiet Sun coronal emission dominantly comes from thermal bremsstrahlung. As this radiation traverses the coronal medium on its way to the Earthbound observer, the coronal optical depth, τ, along typical ray paths is neither low enough to be approximated as optically thin, nor high enough to be treated as optically thick. On its way to the observer, it gets modified substantially due to propagation effects —primarily refraction and scattering—through the […]