ASTER User's Guide - NASA

ASTER Users Handbookoverpass then you should get in touch with the ASTER team to find out how to submit a requestto make sure the instrument is turned on over your site on that particular 16-day cycle. TheASTER Science Support Scheduling group (SSSG) can be contacted via the ASTER web site:http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.govDoes the EDC Catalogue contain all the ASTER scenes?Yes, the EDC catalogue contains all the ASTER scenes, searching on Level-1A data searches allASTER data acquired. It typically takes 4-6 weeks after acquisition for a scene to reach the LP-DAAC.Can I order a mosaic of several ASTER scenes?No ASTER data are only available as single scenes.I submitted a proposal to have ASTER data acquired over my area. What happens next?When a proposal is submitted, there is an automated confirmation response sent from the serverdatabase. If you do not receive the email notification you will need to resubmit the proposalagain. After proper acceptance into the database, it has been taking eight to twelve weeks forcomplete evaluation and processing. We are actively working towards reducing the cycle timeresponse to less than six weeks. We do appreciate everyone’s patience during this transition.I submitted a Data Acquisition Request (DAR) to have ASTER acquire data over my site.Where do I go to find out whether the DAR was successful?The DAR tool is capable of indicating acquisition status but does not include any cloud coverratings. If the status of a DAR is said to have ‘failed’ it generally means that there was noacquisition made before the Lifetime of the DAR expired. Acquisitions are determined by verycomplex scheduling algorithms. Delivery of the acquired data sets is usually between three andfour weeks after acquisition. On occasion, the process can be completed within two weeks of anacquisition but may require special operator handling.13.5 ASTER MetadataWhat is an HDF metadata file and how can I access it?The HDF metadata file is the information that is embedded within the header of the Level-1 hdffile. We have chosen to call it “the embedded HDF metadata” to discriminate it from the “.met”file produced externally by ECS. The embedded HDF metadata are written in ODL (ObjectDescription Language), an ASCII-based “parameter = value” format, and contains a number ofattributes relating to the Level-1 dataset. How these are viewed depends on the imageprocessingpackage being used to open the Level-1 dataset. If you have the HDF libraries set upto use the basic HDF tools available from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications(NCSA), you can use the “ncdump” utility to capture the header of the hdf file that contains thesame information as the HDF metadata. The HDF metadata file broadly contains 8 attribute70