5.8
On-orbit radiometric characterization of Suomi NPP Day-Night-Band (DNB)

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Tuesday, 4 February 2014: 5:15 PM
Room C111 (The Georgia World Congress Center )
Lushalan Liao, Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, Redondo Beach, CA; and S. Weiss, S. Mills, B. Hauss, and C. K. Liang

On-orbit radiometric characterization of Suomi NPP Day-Night-Band (DNB)

Lushalan B Liao, Stephanie Weiss, Steve Mills and Bruce Hauss

The Suomi NPP launched on 28 October 2011 hosts the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) sensor. The VIIRS sensor includes a Day-Night-Band (DNB) that covers almost 7 orders of magnitude in its dynamic range from full sunlit scenes to lunar illuminated clouds. The DNB is panchromatic and covers the wavelengths from 500 nm to 900 nm. Since launch, extensive effort has gone into its characterization. We have shown that the DNB is performing extremely well, meeting most of its specifications with some minor exceedances. The only significant deviation from specification involves the stray light specification. On-orbit, the characterization shows that the DNB suffers stray light level on the order of 100% Lmin or 3x10-9 W∙cm-2∙sr-1. After algorithmic correction, the residual radiometric error was reduced to approximately 4.5x10-10 W∙cm-2∙sr-1. This paper will discuss the DNB radiometric characterization: radiometric sensitivity, radiometric uncertainty, stray light and the removal of airglow signal from the offset determination.