Abstract
Bhaskara, the first Indian Earth Observations Satellite was launched on June 7, 1979. The two primary payloads onboard the Bhaskara satellite were two Television cameras (TV Camera) and two frequency Satellite Microwave Radiometers (SAMIR). The salient features of the TV camera and SAMIR payloads are summarised and given in Table 1.
Since the Bhaskara TV data is having a low resolution and as the data was acquired in only one band, namely, 0.54-0. 66 µm, the utility of the data from the point of view of information extraction on earth resources is limited. Moreover, because of its orbital characteristics the data is acquired at different times of the day and thus under various illumination conditions.
This note discusses an approach that is designed to increase the scope of utilisation of this data. This approach is developed using both digital and photographic techniques with a view to arrive at a standard set of keys for analysing and interpreting the TV data. The basis of the digital technique is the frequency distribution of gray tones (reflectance values) for identifying major cover types, classifying them and generation of three new data sets by assigning pseudo grey codes to the classified data. The pseudo gray coded data is then used to generate photographically colour codes for each of the cover type. Each pseudo data set is turned into a photographic film transparency and is assigned the colours red, green and blue respectively. The colour composite made using these transparencies is the new colour coded thematic ground cover picture from Bhaskara.
Date of this Version
1981