  We present a Thomas-Fermi treatment of resonant incoherent scattering of
low-intensity light by a dilute spatially confined Bose-Einstein condensate.
The description gives simple analytical results and allows scattering data from
finite-size condensates to be interpreted in terms of the properties of the
homogeneous BEC-system. As an example, we show how the energy dispersion of the
elementary excitations can be measured from scattering by a finite-size
atomic-trap condensate. As a second example, we point out that a near-resonant
scattering experiment can observe quasi-particle creation caused by particle
annihilation.
