Proposed Design Of An Imaging Spectropolarimeter/Photometer For Remote Sensing Of Earth Resources

Abstract

A design is presented for an imaging spectropolarimeter/photometer based on the Landsat multispectral scanner (MSS) for the wavelength range 0.5 to 1 .1 µm. The proposed scanner has essentially the same wavelength sensitivity, field of view, and scanning parameters of the original MSS except for the duplication of sensing and data systems for the determination of the amount of plane polarization. A unique nonpolarizing (i.e., polarization-com-pensated) scanning system is described, as well as a nonpolarizing beam splitter.