HyTES - National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO) Airborne and Ground Campaign

The main aim of the campaign was to quantify how surface temperatures can change depending on the angle at which the sensor is viewing the surface and to further explore drivers of these changes.

To achieve this, two Twin Otter aircrafts flew simultaneously to collect thermal observations of the surface at different angles. One aircraft (provided and flown by the British Antarctic Survey) was equipped with selected sensors of NCEO’s airborne imaging suite, with the main instrument the Specim OWL — a longwave infrared hyperspectral sensor which members of the NCEO-King’s team have modified so that the whole system can dynamically tilt up to 36 degrees off nadir. The other aircraft, provided and flown by Kenn Borek Air, was equipped with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Hyperspectral Thermal Emission Spectrometer (HyTES).

Both the OWL and HyTES are passive thermal sensors which detect thermal radiation emitted from the Earth’s surface in multiple wavebands.
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