Solid angle to the unit sphere with center P, which can be calculated as the surface integral: where formula_5 is the unit vector corresponding to formula_6, the position vector of an infinitesimal area of surface with respect to point P, and where formula_7 represents the unit normal vector to . Even if the projection on the unit sphere to the surface S is not isomorphic, the multiple folds are correctly considered according to the surface orientation described by the sign of the scalar product formula_8. Thus one can approximate the solid angle subtended by a small facet having flat surface area ,
Solid angle of a planar triangle is equal to "", for the sum of the four internal solid angles of a tetrahedron as follows: where ranges over all six of the dihedral angles between any two planes that contain the tetrahedral faces OAB, OAC, OBC and ABC. A useful formula for calculating the solid angle subtended by the triangular surface ABC where formula_17 are the vector positions of the vertices A, B and C has been given by Oosterom and Strackee (although the result was known earlier by Euler and Lagrange): where denotes the scalar triple product of the three vectors; When