ASTER
 Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer

The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is one of 5 instruments aboard the Terra platform that was launched in December, 1999. ASTER was built by a consortium of Japanese government, industry, and research groups.

It has three spectral bands in the visible near-infrared (VNIR), six bands in the short-wave infrared (SWIR), and five bands in the thermal infrared (TIR) regions, with 15, 30, and 90 meters ground resolution respectively. This combination of wide spectral coverage and high spatial resolution allows ASTER to discriminate amongst a large variety of surface materials, ideal for geological studies. The VNIR subsystem is capable of high-resolution stereoscopic observations.

Subsystem Band No. Spectral Range
(µm)		 Spatial Resolution
VNIR 1
2
3N
3B		 0.52 - 0.60
0.63 - 0.69
0.78 - 0.86
0.78 - 0.86		 15 m
SWIR 4
5
6
7
8
9		 1.600 - 1.700
2.145 - 2.185
2.185 - 2.225
2.235 - 2.285
2.295 - 2.365
2.360 - 2.430		 30 m
TIR 10
11
12
13
14		 8.125 - 8.475
8.475 - 8.825
8.925 - 9.275
10.25 - 10.95
10.95 - 11.65		 90 m


The ASTER instrument is unique in two respects: include:

• it provides multispectral thermal infrared data of high spatial resolution, and also the highest spatial resolution surface spectral reflectance, temperature and emissivity data of all the Terra instrument sensor systems;

• because of its limited duty cycle, data are acquired to fulfill on-demand data acquisition requests.

The ASTER data products include relative spectral reflectance and emissivity, surface radiance, temperature, reflectance and emissivity, brightness temperature-at-sensor, and digital elevation models.

ASTER data are expected to contribute to a wide array of application areas including, geology and soils, vegetation and ecosystem dynamics, hazards monitoring (volcanoes, wildfires, floods, landslides, and coastal erosion), land surface climatology, hydrology, and land cover change.

ASTER Data Products

Long Name Short Name Resolution
Level-1 Data
ASTER Level 1A Reconstructed Unprocessed Instrument Data AST_L1A 15, 30, 90 m
ASTER Level 1B Registered Radiance at Sensor AST_L1B 15, 30, 90 m
ASTER Expedited L1A Reconstructed Unprocessed Instrument Data AST_L1AE 15, 30, 90 m
ASTER Expedited L1B Registered Radiance at Sensor AST_L1BE 15, 30, 90 m
Level-2 Products
ASTER L2 Decorrelation Stretch VNIR AST_06V 15 m
ASTER L2 Decorrelation Stretch SWIR AST_06S 30 m
ASTER L2 Decorrelation Stretch TIR AST_06T 90 m
The Level-3 Product
ASTER Digital Elevation Model AST14DEM 30 m

 

Aster and MadMappers:

The Madmappers Team routinely processes ASTER Level-1A, ASTER Level-1B and  Expedited ASTER Level-1 into products for topographic, spectral and digital elevation model studies. Furthermore MadMappers is capable of processing ASTER Level-1A into ASTER Level-1B by applying the appropriate corrections. By virtue of being able of generating Aster DEM products, orthorectification is also achieved. Furthermore MadMappers is able to schedule data acquisitions for selected study areas in Africa.

Aster products are undoubtedly superior to their Landsat 7 equivalent due to their superb clarity and crispiness.

Software:

Until recently only advanced remote sensing software was the only means to access native Aster data in HDF format. The excellent Globalmapper can now read and convert HDF data into formats suitable to common GIS software.
MadMappers collection comprises of Aster data suitable for use in OziExplorer.

 

Additional details regarding the instrument, data products etc. can be accessed from:

http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/default.htm