Glaciers
Mountains
A sensor on the early Landsats had a name worthy of some Star Trek gadget. Originally Landsat’s primary sensor, the Return Beam Vidicon (RBV) flew on the first three Landsats.
A sample RBV image shows the northwestern coast of Madagascar. The black-and-white image from 1981 has higher resolution than the Multispectral Scanner (MSS) on board the early Landsats. So what happened to these RBV images, and are they useful today?
What’s a Vidicon?
A vidicon is a television camera tube that formed an image by focusing light onto a photoconductive faceplate. An electron beam scanned the faceplate, detecting light intensity for each scan line. The beam then bounced back by an electrically charged area. The resulting picture was made up of about 5,000 separate scan lines (compared to 525 for a traditional television picture).
Location
Oct. 10, 1980, Landsat 3, RBV — Mount Ararat, Turkey
Sketch of Landsat 1, formerly known as the Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS)
Landsat’s Return Beam Vidicon Additional Imagery & Stories
Alaska
One of the factors that improves on Landsat sensors over the project’s history is the quality of the data. For example, compare these images of glacie...
Mt. Ararat
Despite its problems, RBV data has been used in land change studies. RBV data was used in a recent scientific study of glaciers in Turkey. Scientists ...
RBV Data
Roughly 138,000 images were taken by the RBV on Landsat 3. The data were recorded to 70-mm black and white film rolls at the NASA Goddard Space Flight...
RBV's Beginnings
Landsat’s RBV had an inauspicious beginning. It rode into orbit on Landsat 1 on July 23, 1972. During orbit 196, just 14 days later, a relay in the Po...
RBV's Problems
Because of RBV’s higher spatial resolution than MSS, glaciologists were able to use the RBV imagery for spotting more detail. “If you want to look at ...
References
eoPortal, 2018, Landsat-1 to 3: eoPortal, accessed November 2, 2018, at https://directory.eoportal.org/web/eoportal/satellite-missions/l/landsat-1-3.
EROS Data Center, and Clark, B.P., 1981, Landsat 3 Return Beam Vidicon Response Artifacts—A Report on RBV Photographic Product Characteristics and Quality Coding System: USGS Open-File Report 82-803, accessed November 2, 2018, at https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/ofr82803.
Ferrigno, J.G., Williams Jr., R.S., and Kent, T.M., 1983, Evaluation of Landsat 3 RBV Images for Earth Science Studies in Antarctica, in Oliver, R.L., James, P.R., and Jago, J.B. (Eds.), Antarctic Earth Science: Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 446–449.
Freden, S.C., and Gordon Jr., F., 1983, Landsat Satellites, in Colwell, R.N. (Ed.), Manual of Remote Sensing, 2nd Ed. Vol. 1, “Theory, Instruments and Techniques”: Falls Church, Va., American Society of Photogrammetry, p. 517–570.
Goward, S.N., Williams, D.L., Arvidson, T., Rocchio, L.E.P., Irons, J.R., Russell, C.A., and Johnston, S.S., 2017, Landsat’s Enduring Legacy—Pioneering Global Land Observations from Space: Bethesda, MD, American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 586p.
Kurter, A., 1988, Glaciers of the Middle East and Africa—Glaciers of Turkey: USGS Professional Paper 1386-G-1, 30p, accessed November 2, 2018, at https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/p1386g/.
Mack, P.E., 1990, Viewing the Earth—The Social Construction of the Landsat Satellite System: Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 284p.
NASA, 1999, Using Satellites to Measure Glaciers: NASA Earth Observatory, accessed November 2, 2018, at https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Glaciers/glaciers_4.php.
USGS, 2018, Landsat Missions Timeline: USGS Landsat Missions, accessed April 22, 2019, at https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/landsat-missions-timeline.
USGS, 2018, The Progress of Landsat Sensor Technology: USGS Image of the Week, accessed November 2, 2018, at https://eros.usgs.gov/image-of-the-week/progress-landsat-sensor-technology.
USGS, 2015, Return Beam Vidicon (RBV) Film Only: USGS Long Term Archive, accessed November 2, 2018, at https://lta.cr.usgs.gov/rbv.html.
Yavasli, D.D. and Tucker, C.J., 2012, Small Glacier Area Studies—A New Approach for Turkey: International Glaciological Society's Nordic Conference, 24–27 Oct. 2012, Stockholm, Sweden, 11p., accessed October 26, 2018, at https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20120015895.
Personal comm.: John Dwyer, Chief, Science and Applications Branch, USGS EROS; John Faundeen, Archivist and Chief, Office of Communications & Outreach, USGS EROS; Chris Crawford, USGS EROS