NAST Instrument |
Environmental Satellite System Airborne Sounder Testbed - Interferometer (NAST-I) Instrument Part of the CIMSS Web |
Proteus aircraft |
Introduction
The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System
Airborne Sounder Testbed - Interferometer (NAST-I) instrument is a scanning
interferometer which measures emitted thermal radiation at high spectral
resolution between 3.3 and 18 microns (specifications). The measured
emitted radiance is used to obtain temperature and water vapor profiles
of the Earth's atmosphere. NAST-I produces sounding data with 2 kilometer
resolution (at nadir) across a 40 kilometer ground swath from a nominal
altitude of 20 kilometers onboard a NASA ER-2 aircraft or similar coverage
from the PROTEUS aircraft.
Data
If you wish to browse the NAST-I data from the complete archive, you
can first browse the quicklooks available for selected NAST-I field campaigns
(e.g. CAMEX3), and then find the data set in the Index.
Software
NAST-I data are stored in network common data format (netCDF).
Programs for reading NAST-I data in this format are available in Fortran,
IDL, Matlab source code. To visualize NAST-I data, a Matlab browser
is used for basic image viewing.
Algorithms
Algorithms using NAST-I data are being developed to retrieve remotely
sensed temperature and water vapor profiles, sea surface skin temperature,
land surface temperature and emissivity, cloud top temperature and emissivity,
and trace gas total column amounts.
Partners
The NAST-I instrument was built by MIT-Lincoln Labs with calibration
reference sources provided by the University of Wisconsin - Madison Space
Science and Engineering Center. The interferometer module was provided
by Bomem, Inc. of Quebec, Canada. The NAST-I instrument is operated
by NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) with support from the University
of Wisconsin - Madison. Support for NAST-I development has been provided
by NASA and the Integrated Project Office (IPO). The companion NAST-M
instrument (Microwave sensor) was built, and operated by, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
Related Links
Last Updated 6/01/2000 by dennyh@ssec.wisc.edu