Nimbus-3 Satellite Infrared Brightness Temperature Images

Scanned negatives from the Nimbus-3 High-Resolution Infrared Radiometer provide orbital images of daytime and nighttime Earth brightness temperature from April 1969 to January 1970. The dataset contains JPEG 2000 files of gridded orbital swaths, archived in weekly TAR files. G. Thomas Cherrix of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center was the Principal Investigator for this instrument.

Use Cases

• Analyze historical cloud cover patterns by comparing daytime (0.7-1.3 micron) and nighttime (3.4-4.2 micron) brightness temperature images.
• Study Earth's surface temperature distribution from the gridded geographic coordinates over each orbital swath.
• Track the evolution of early infrared remote sensing techniques using data from the operational period of April 1969 to January 1970.
• Examine polar region temperature gradients using images covering approximately from the south pole to the north pole.

Strengths

• Data covers a defined 9-month operational period from April 22, 1969, to January 31, 1970.
• Images contain dual spectral bands for daytime and nighttime observations.
• Each orbital swath picture is gridded with geographic coordinates for spatial reference.

Limitations

• Data is historical and temporally limited to a single 9-month period in 1969-1970.
• The original data source is scanned 70mm film negatives, which may introduce artifacts or lower resolution compared to modern digital sensors.
• Specific row counts, file sizes, and sample data details are unavailable.

Provenance

Source

NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC), originally from the Nimbus-3 satellite mission.

Collection Method

Data produced from scanned negatives of photofacsimile 70mm film strips recorded by the High-Resolution Infrared Radiometer (HRIR) instrument.

Time Range

1969-04-22 to 1970-01-31

Freshness

Data collection ended on 1970-01-31.

Geography

Global coverage, with orbital swaths covering approximately from pole to pole.