Data Selection Criteria in Star-Based Monitoring of GOES Imager Visible-Channel Responsivities

摘要

Monitoring the responsivities of the visible channels of the operational Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) is an on-going effort at NOAA. Various techniques are being used. In this paper we describe the technique based on the analysis of star signals that are used in the GOES Orbit and Attitude Tracking System (OATS) for satellite attitude and orbit determination. Time series of OATS star observations give information on the degradation of the detectors of a visible channel. Investigations of star data from the past three years have led to several modifications of the method we initially used to calculate the exponential degradation coefficient of a star-signal time series. First we observed that different patterns of detector output versus time result when star images drift across the detector array along different trajectories. We found that certain trajectories should be rejected in the data analysis. We found also that some detector-dependent weighting coefficients used in the OATS analysis tend to scatter the star signals measured by different detectors. We present a set of modifications to our star monitoring algorithms for resolving such problems. Other simple enhancements on the algorithms will also be described. With these modifications, the time series of the star signals show less scatter. This allows for more confidence in the estimated degradation rates and a more realistic statistical analysis on the extent of uncertainty in those rates. The resulting time series and estimated degradation rates for the visible channels of GOES-8 and GOES-10 Imagers will be presented.