Sentinel-3A OLCI: Ocean and Land Color Satellite Imagery

Sentinel-3A's Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) provides Level-1B Earth-observation data as the successor to the ENVISAT MERIS instrument. Its push-broom design uses five cameras in a fan-shaped configuration with a 12.6-degree sun-glint avoidance shift, offering data at native Full Resolution (FR) of approximately 300m and Reduced Resolution (RR) of approximately 1.2 km. The instrument includes on-board calibration hardware with three sun diffusers for radiometric and spectral calibration.

Use Cases

• Monitoring ocean chlorophyll concentration based on multi-spectral ocean color data.
• Assessing coastal water quality and sediment transport using the instrument's spectral channels.
• Calibrating and validating other satellite sensors based on the on-board sun diffuser calibration system.
• Studying land surface vegetation in the instrument's shifted field of view to minimize sun glint.

Strengths

• Instrument design is described in specific detail, including a 14.2-degree individual camera field of view with 0.6-degree overlaps.
• Provides calibrated Level-1B data in two spatial resolutions: approximately 300m (Full Resolution) and 1.2 km (Reduced Resolution).
• On-board calibration uses three dedicated sun diffusers, improving data reliability for quantitative analysis.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, and specific column names are unavailable across all sources.
• The dataset's temporal coverage and specific geographic extents are not provided.
• One source lists a last updated date in the future (2026), indicating potential metadata inconsistency.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Data collected by the Sentinel-3A satellite's Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI), a push-broom imaging spectrometer.

Time Range

null

Freshness

2026-04-09 22:07:32.128569

Geography

Global coverage from satellite orbit, with a field of view shifted 12.6 degrees across track.