EPS 245: Planetary Optical Remote Sensing (EPS 195)

Course Description

In this class, we will learn the physical principles behind observing reflected and emitted light from planetary bodies. We will cover different types of optical remote sensing instrumentation, such as cameras, UV- visible- near- and shortwave infrared imaging spectrometers, and thermal infrared imaging spectrometers. We will explore how scientific questions, instrument hardware design, and resulting data products are linked and integrated in spacecraft mission design as well as how uncertainties, errors, and accuracies are quantified for these data types. We will review current research literature on how these remote sensing instruments and datasets have been utilized to characterize planetary bodies across the solar system and exoplanets, for geological exploration on Earth, and briefly applications in defense and the commercial industry. The course will offer hands-on experience in laboratory, field ground-truthing, and computational techniques for analyzing these data products through 4 homework projects on real spacecraft data from planetary and Earth orbit missions. We will spend a 2-day weekend planetary surface analogue field trip in the Mono Lake area as part of the last homework. Each student will select a scientific question of interest in the planetary sciences and address it by either proposing an instrument design or performing an analysis on a real planetary dataset for their final project.