MASTER Airborne Multispectral Imagery from California Student Campaign

Fifty bands of calibrated radiance imagery were collected over southern California during a student-led airborne campaign. The dataset from the 2015 Student Airborne Research Program includes three flights across 25 tracks, captured by the MASTER instrument on a NASA DC-8 aircraft. Data products are georeferenced at approximately 20-meter resolution and stored in HDF-4 format.

Use Cases

• Analyzing land surface temperature using thermal infrared bands (0.460 to 12.879 micrometers).
• Studying vegetation or urban heat islands via calibrated radiance values across 50 spectral bands.
• Mapping flight paths and correlating spectral data with specific geographic locations.
• Developing algorithms for multispectral image processing with Level 1B georeferenced data.
• Using browse images for quick visual assessment of data file coverage and quality.

Strengths

• Provides calibrated radiance data across 50 spectral bands, from visible to thermal infrared.
• Offers high spatial resolution of approximately 20 meters for detailed surface analysis.
• Includes ancillary metadata such as flight paths, instrument configuration, and band information.

Limitations

• Exact row count, file size, and specific column names are not provided by any source.
• Sources conflict on the last updated date: Data.gov lists 2026-03-13, while NASA Earthdata lists 2015-06-25.
• Primary data format is HDF-4, which may require specialized software for access and processing.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Student Airborne Research Program (SARP).

Collection Method

Data collected by the MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator (MASTER) instrument flown on a NASA DC-8 aircraft.

Time Range

2015-06 23 to 2015-06-24

Freshness

2026-03-13 00:57:57.618756

Geography

Southern California, U.S.