Simultaneous processing of visible and long-wave infrared satellite imagery

Abstract

One of the challenges of imaging satellites in the daytime is that the sun is generally behind the satellite from the observer's point of view. This means that much of the satellite structure can be in shadow at any given time. The Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing (AMOS) site's 3.6 meter telescope has the capability of recording data simultaneously in two bands of long-wave infrared (LWIR) as well as visible. This presents the possibility of performing joint processing of the infrared and visible imagery, which is appealing because the thermal imagery will not have any shadows. We describe exploitation strategies for this type of data, show the results of joint multiband processing, and compare with single-band images.