INSTRUMENTS

Coastal Zone Color Scanner

The Coastal Zone Color Scanner Experiment (CZCS), launched aboard Nimbus 7 in October 1978, was the first instrument devoted to the measurement of ocean color and flown on a spacecraft. Although other instruments flown on other spacecraft had sensed ocean color, their spectral bands, spatial resolution and dynamic range were optimized for land or meteorological use and had limited sensitivity in this area, whereas in CZCS, every parameter was optimized for use over water to the exclusion of any other type of sensing.  CZCS data will be available from the Ocean Color Web when reprocessing of this data set (an Ocean Color Time-Series Project activity) is completed.

Ocean Color and Temperature Scanner (OCTS)

OCTS operated on the Midori (ADEOS) satellite for nine months, from October 1996 to June 1997. NASDA (the Japanese space agency) and the NASA SIMBIOS Project reprocessed OCTS data to be similar in data file structure to data from the SeaWiFS Project.   Level 1A, Level 2, and Level 3 NASDA-SIMBIOS-OCTS data will be available from the Ocean Color Web when reprocessing of this data set (an Ocean Color Time-Series Project activity) is completed.

Sea-Viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS)

The SeaWiFS mission data set begins on September 18, 1997, and ends on December 23, 2004. SeaWiFS has eight spectral bands in the visible and near-infrared, and provides normalized water-leaving radiance data for those bands and geophysical products - most notably chlorophyll a - derived from the water-leaving radiances.   SeaWiFS data is available from the Ocean Color Web.

Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)

MODIS is one of the most advanced earth observation instruments ever orbited, and there are two of them: MODIS-Terra on the Terra satellite and MODIS-Aqua on the Aqua satellite.   MODIS-Aqua ocean color data may be accessed via the Ocean Color Web.