MASTER Airborne Multispectral Imagery and Land Surface Temperature for Western US

MASTER airborne sensor data includes Level 1B georeferenced multispectral imagery and Level 2 derived products from eight NASA ER-2 flights. The dataset provides calibrated radiance across 50 spectral bands and derived land surface temperature and emissivity in 5 thermal infrared bands. It was collected over the western U.S. and Pacific Ocean in October 2003 by NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center.

Use Cases

• Validating satellite-derived land surface temperature and emissivity products using the 5-band thermal infrared data.
• Analyzing surface spectral properties with calibrated radiance from 50 bands covering visible to thermal wavelengths.
• Studying spatial patterns of thermal emissions at approximately 50-meter resolution over diverse western U.S. terrain.
• Correlating flight path and instrument configuration metadata with the georeferenced imagery for mission analysis.

Strengths

• Includes 50 spectral bands of calibrated radiance data, providing detailed spectral coverage from 0.460 to 12.879 micrometers.
• Contains derived Level 2 products such as land surface temperature and 5-band emissivity in the thermal infrared range (8.58-12.13 µm).
• Data is georeferenced and collected at a high spatial resolution of approximately 50 meters.

Limitations

• Sources conflict on the last updated date: one platform reports 2026-03-13, while another reports 2003-11-01.
• Specific row counts, file sizes, and detailed column names are not provided by any source.

Provenance

Source

NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center (formerly Dryden), ORNL_CLOUD.

Collection Method

Data collected by the MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator (MASTER) instrument aboard a NASA ER-2 aircraft during eight coordinated flights.

Time Range

2003-10-03 to 2003-11-01

Freshness

2026-03-13 01:00:55.743244

Geography

Western United States and Pacific Ocean.