Hyperspectral

Whereas most satellites have between 4 to 6 broad spectral bands (such as blue, breed, red, near infrared), multispectral satellites might have between 10 to 25 bands. A true hyperspectral satellite can sense enough narrow bandwidth bins to be able to identify the chemical spectral signature of each pixel in an image, which might be anywhere from 100 to 300 narrow spectral bands.

There are not many hyperspectral satellites. One reason is that the optics are extremely challenging. Another reason is that the more data needs to be transmitted back to the Earth than can be accommodated by Space-to-Earth communications systems.

Hyperspectral Satellites

Hyperspectral Cameras

  1. Commercial
    1. Resonon
    2. BaySpec
    3. Surface Optics Corp
    4. Ocean Optics
  2. Non-Commercial/Research
    1. SUCHI: The Space Ultra-Compact Hyperspectral Imager for small satellites; this might be useful where there is not much room for a camera.

Relevant Optics

  1. SemRock. Tunable filters (downloadable introduction).
  2. Wikipedia. Liquid Crystal Tunable Filter (LCTF) introduction.
  3. ThorLabs. Liquid Crystal Tunable Filter (LCTF) product.
  4. Resonon benchtop systems.
  5. Ocean Optics modular spectrometers.

Hyperspectral Software

  1. Resonon Spectronon  software.
  2. Hyperspectral Image Analysis Toolbox (HIAT). Uses MATLAB.
  3. ERDAS IMAGINE spectral analysis
  4. Hyperspectral IR analysis module for MUSES.
  5. TNTmips. Software for hyperspectral analysis and geospatial analysis, GIS.
  6. Hyperspectral analysis in R.
  7. NemaPlot.
  8. Exelis VIS (works with ArcGIS). Tutorial.
  9. U. of Manchester (D.F. Foster) MatLAB routines and tutorial.
  10. Kakadu JPEG software development (not specifically for hyperspectral)
  11. DSP TSC21020E (a high-reliability version of the ADSP21020) compression software.

Optical Support Equipment

  1. ThorLabs.
  2. Edmund Optics.

Hyperspectral data and libraries

  1. USGS Digital Spectral Library (reflectance)
  2. Scyllarus (NICTA). Miscellaneous objects taken from the ground.
  3. AVERIS data (includes Moffett Field data)

Conferences & Events

  1. Hyperspectral Imaging and Sounding of the Environment (HISE), 1-4 March 2015 California.

More Information And Reference

  1. ASDI. Spectral Remote Sensing
  2. Microimages hyperspectral data.
  3. NASA SpinOffs article.
  4. AGI (download).
  5. Lossy compression Google search.

News