HomeSpace & AstronomyOrbital Thermal Hotspot Detector — Pushbroom Scan (2D)

Orbital Thermal Hotspot Detector — Pushbroom Scan (2D)

A 2D top-down pushbroom thermal-IR satellite scan of a planetary lava flow: watch the sensor image build line by line while sub-pixel mixing between hot vent and cold background biases the recovered brightness temperature low, the classic 'mixed pixel' problem in real volcano-monitoring missions.

Space & Astronomy2DAdvanced60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 3D version
2d-planetary-volcanology-observatory ↗ Open standalone

This 2D companion models the same instrument problem as the 3D orbital view, from directly above: a thermal-infrared satellite flies a straight ground track over a planetary surface and its pushbroom sensor reads one cross-track line of pixels at a time, stacking those lines into an image exactly as real scanning radiometers do. Underneath, a continuous "true" heat field — a vent or flow with adjustable temperature and radius, set against a background from icy-moon to Venusian — is sampled by a sensor grid whose pixel size (GSD) scales with orbital altitude. Each pixel integrates real Stefan–Boltzmann radiance from its sub-pixel mix of hot and cold surface and reports a single apparent brightness temperature, always biased low relative to the true vent whenever the hotspot doesn't fill the whole pixel — the same "mixed pixel" effect that limits real missions like MODIS/MODVOLC and Galileo's NIMS at Io. Watch the top-down truth field, the growing retrieved image, and a live trace of true vs. recovered temperature as the satellite passes directly over the hotspot and away again, alongside a physically grounded radiant-heat-flux and effusion-rate estimate.

⚙ Under the hood

A top-down pushbroom thermal-IR satellite scan of a planetary lava flow: watch the sensor image build line by line while sub-pixel mixing between hot vent and cold background biases the recovered brightness temperature low, the classic 'mixed pixel' problem in real volcano-monitoring missions.

volcanologyremote sensingthermal infraredStefan-Boltzmannplanetary sciencesatellitepushbroom scan

2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install

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