Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: patterso@ads.com (Tim J. Patterson)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Infra-red detection
Message-ID: <12568@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 23 Dec 89 06:05:15 GMT
References: <12535@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
Organization: Advanced Decision Systems
Lines: 20
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: patterso@ads.com (Tim J. Patterson)

In article <12535@cbnews.ATT.COM> GA.CJJ@Forsythe.Stanford.EDU (Clifford Johnson) writes:

>Are satellite sensors sufficiently sensitive to detect residual
>differences in spectroscopic distributions as to reliably
>differentiate between various hot sources?  I don't believe so.
>Can anyone enlighten me?

There is indeed a spectroscopic difference between an oil fire and a
missile plume.  In order to detect a spectroscopic difference you need
a multi-channel IR sensor-aka multispectral.  Certainly neither of the
2 available multispectral satellites (LANDSAT TM, and SPOT) has the IR
resolution to see the spectral difference.  While it is theoretically
possible to do this, optical and detector plane technology in the IR
region is more difficult than much of the visible region so probably
this type of discrimination will have to continue to be done using
target/background discrimination and spatial cues.