Spectral Characteristics Viewer

The Spectral Characteristics Viewer allows the following actions:

Investigate individual sensor Relative Spectral Responses (RSRs) including Full Width Half Maximum (FWHM).
Compare two sensor RSRs including FWHM.
Investigate individual target spectra.
Compare six target spectra.
Overlay up to two sensor RSRs and six target spectra for analysis.
Compute the response [sensor(s) sampling the target(s)] of up to two sensor RSRs sampling up to six target spectra.

The Spectral Characteristics Viewer allows users to evaluate satellite sensor bands that may be best suited for application research related to the available targets.

Over the last several months, the USGS EROS EROS CalVal Center of Excellence (ECCOE) project has updated and improved this viewer. The latest improvements include enhanced display controls, display highlighting of sensor RSR and target spectra on legend mouseover, mouseover tooltips for target spectra short name traceability to the USGS Spectroscopy Lab, and the response calculation of the sensor RSR sampling the target spectra.

How to use the Spectral Characteristics Viewer (Click to expand/close)

Spectral characteristics results may be captured using system and web browser print functions, or a screen capture tool.

Sensor RSR: The RSR for the following satellites are currently available:

Landsat 9 OLI
Landsat 9 TIRS (not currently displayed in viewer)
Landsat 8 OLI
Landsat 8 TIRS (not currently displayed in viewer)
Landsat 7 ETM+
Landsat 5 TM
Landsat 4 TM
Landsat 5 MSS
Landsat 4 MSS
Landsat 3 MSS
Landsat 2 MSS
Landsat 1 MSS
Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) Advanced Land Imager (ALI)
Terra Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) (Ref: https://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/characteristics.asp)
Terra Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) (Ref: https://mcst.gsfc.nasa.gov/calibration/parameters)
SENTINEL-2A (also available in the Sentinel 2 Document Library)

Target Spectra: The USGS Spectroscopy Lab contains the spectra source information available in this viewer.