ASTER Orthorectified Radiance Imagery with Terrain Correction

ASTER Registered Radiance at the Sensor - Orthorectified V003 provides fifteen orthorectified, radiometrically calibrated radiance images per scene from the Terra satellite's ASTER instrument. The dataset is produced by NASA's LP DAAC and was decommissioned on December 15, 2025.

Use Cases

• Analyzing land surface temperature and emissivity using calibrated radiance values from the Thermal Infrared (TIR) bands.
• Monitoring vegetation health and land cover change through spectral indices calculated from the Visible and Near-Infrared (VNIR) band radiance.
• Creating accurate base maps for geological studies by leveraging orthorectified imagery mapped to the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinate system.
• Detecting and correcting for anomalous striping and saturation artifacts in Shortwave Infrared (SWIR) band data acquired after April 2008.

Strengths

• Provides fifteen calibrated radiance images per scene, one for each ASTER spectral band.
• Imagery is orthorectified and terrain-corrected, offering map-like geometric characteristics.
• Radiometric calibration uses updated Coefficient Version 5 (RCC V5) for improved accuracy.

Limitations

• Contains known data gaps: no VNIR observations from November 28, 2024, to January 16, 2025, and no TIR observations from November 28, 2024, to April 15, 2025.
• SWIR band data acquired from April 2008 onward exhibits anomalous saturation and striping, requiring user correction.
• The data product was decommissioned and is no longer being updated as of December 15, -2025.

Provenance

Source

NASA Terra Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument, processed by the LP DAAC.

Collection Method

Processed from ASTER Level 1A data using georeferencing information and an ASTER-derived digital elevation model (DEM).

Time Range

Coverage spans the ASTER instrument's operational lifetime, with specific processing changes noted from June 2021.

Freshness

null

Geography

Global coverage, mapped to the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinate system.