The planetary albedo , an intrinsic property of a planet, measures the fraction of incident radiant energy (or insolation) that it reflects back to space. Its complement, the co-albedo ) thus determines what fraction of that insolation, I, remains to heat the planet. Several components of the planet and interactions among them go into deciding the value of . For Earth, the atmosphere and clouds are major contributors to albedo (Ramanathan, 1987), as are its surface properties (the land fraction, ice cover (Budyko, 1969) and even the biosphere (Betts, 2000)). Whereas the contributions of the constituent parts of the albedo have been studied in great detail, little attention has been devoted to understanding the properties of the albedo as a whole, as seen from space, and as one might do for another planet.