Parallel Acquisition of Airborne and Satellite Nighttime Datasets over Oldenburg

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Thomas Krauß, Susanne Weyand, Veronika Gstaiger, Franz Kurz, Alexandre Wiefels, Shuhai Yu

Published: 2023, Last Modified: 25 Feb 2026JURSE 2023EveryoneRevisionsBibTeXCC BY-SA 4.0
Abstract: In this paper we describe the first parallel nighttime remote sensing data acquisition from airplane and satellite. DLR planned a nighttime acquisition in June 2022 over Oldenburg with an aircraft from its own research fleet carrying the 3K camera system. In the scope of a science proposal it was possible to obtain nearly in parallel nighttime satellite images from the Jilin-1 satellite imagery products of Changguang Satellite Technology Co., Ltd. provided by HEAD Aerospace. The result of this cooperation is for the first time a direct comparison of a parallel aerial and satellite nighttime acquisition of a city. This paper presents as background the recording of night lights for energy system analysis, the prerequisites and processing of the data sets as well as a comparison of the different types of data. Furthermore, challenges which arose during this unique dataset generation are discussed. After a comparison of the data sets and their results, lessons learned and a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of each dataset concludes the article.