[Aust-NZ] How Does Satellite Imagery Compare with Aerial Photography? [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[John Smith]

On 6 April 2010 21:13, Bruce Bannerman <B.Bannerman at bom.gov.au> wrote:
> Resolution is only part of the story.

Sure, depends on your use of the imagery.

> A major advantage that you have with typical remotely sensed imagery such as satellite imagery is that the sensor used often captures many spectral bands of data.

This can be a disadvantage when you are only interested in the visible
(non-IR/non-UV) spectrum, I find Google's current sat imagery gets the
colours very wrong, where as aerial imagery doesn't suffer this
because they only deal with visible light spectrum.

> With aerial photography, you are typically restricted to just three spectral bands (red, green and blue), though near infra red is sometimes used to check vegetation health.

You are restricted to whatever sensors are flown, satellites are
restricted to what ever they're launched with, at least with aerial
imagery you can change between flights.