A method for simultaneous estimation of aerosol size distribution and refractive index from observation of the direct, diffuse, aureole radiance and polarization on the ground was proposed. In the method, a polarization computation based on the successive orders of scattering by separating the molecular and aerosol phase functions to the parallel and perpendicular polarization components in the first order scattering (single scattering) is introduced. Through a comparison between the proposed method and the Volume Spectral Analysis soft (Skyrad.pack) developed by Nakajima et al, it is found that the proposed method is superior to the Skyrad.pack method as aerosol optical depth is thin.
Precipitation estimates from microwave imagers have been the best to draw the global precipitation map. However these sensors are on low earth orbit (LEO), thus temporal sampling is a major drawback. A simple technique to interpolate rain rate observed from LEO microwave imagers or to fill the gaps which microwave data are not available is presented by using moving vectors from geo-IR data. The technique is evaluated using Radar AMeDAS data sets near Japan. The results show that the moving vector technique reduces the error by 0-30% compared to a simple linear interpolation.
We are reporting on the flat-field test of the Asteroid Multiband Imaging CAmera (AMICA) mounted on HAYABUSA. When the AMICA is mounted on HAYABUSA, there is only a limited space allowed for testing. In addition, the space is changeable due to various set-ups of peripheral devices. Thereby a conventional testing hardware may not be useful. Therefore, we developed an original integration spheres which can be handled in the small space of the spacecraft. The flat-field data obtained with these spheres were confirmed scientifically meaningful and we believe that the testing procedures of our study will provide a technical reference in future experiments.