Moon Impacts Recent Landsat 9 Thermal Imagery
The USGS/NASA Landsat Calibration and Validation Team discovered that four Landsat 9 Earth image intervals acquired on May 10, 2023, were impacted by the presence of the Moon in the calibration data.
When the moon intrudes into the view of the Landsat 9 Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) while acquiring Deep Space calibration data, this causes an over-estimation of bias of affected detectors and results in dark streaks through the thermal image data (see the example image). The imagery collected by the Landsat 9 Operational Land Imager (OLI) are not affected by such events.
This issue impacted the thermal data of 98 Landsat 9 Collection 2 scenes acquired on May 10, 2023, between 9:38 a.m. CDT (14:38z) and 5:10 p.m. CDT (22:10z). Data acquired along WRS-2 Paths 8, 56, 72, and 88 were affected.
The affected Landsat 9 scenes were reprocessed on May 11, and are available on all USGS data access portals. Note: the thermal browse images for these scenes may be delayed in being updated.
The USGS recommends that users consider replacing any already downloaded Landsat 9 data and subsequently derived products from May 10, 2023, with these newly reprocessed data products. Please note, the Product ID contains the most recent processing date that will facilitate identification of all scenes included in this reprocessing effort.
Please contact EROS Customer Services with any questions about this reprocessing effort or the resulting data and products.
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