Pre-launch calibration and validation of the Airborne Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (AirHARP) instrument

Abstract. The Airborne Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (AirHARP) is a new imaging polarimeter instrument capable of sampling a single Earth target from up to 120 viewing angles, in four spectral channels, and in three linear polarization states across a 114° field of view (FOV). AirHARP is telecentric in the image space and simultaneously images three linear polarization states with no moving parts. These two aspects of the design allow for a simple and efficient quantitative calibration. Using coefficients derived at the center of the lens and the detector flatfields, we can calibrate the entire AirHARP sensor in a variety of laboratory, field, and space environments. We show that this telecentric calibration technique yields a 1σ absolute uncertainty of 0.25 % in degree of linear polarization (DOLP) in the laboratory for all channels and for pixels around the optical axis. To validate across the FOV, we compare our multi-angle reflectance and polarization data with the Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP) over targets sampled during the NASA Aerosol Characterization from Polarimeter and Lidar (ACEPOL) campaign. We use the error-normalized difference technique to estimate how well the instruments compare relative to their error models. We find that AirHARP and the RSP reasonably agree for reflectance and DOLP within 2 standard deviations of their mutual uncertainty at 550, 670, and 870 nm and over a limited set of ocean and desert scenes. This calibration technique makes the Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (HARP) design attractive for new spaceborne climate missions: HARP CubeSat (2020–2022), HARP2 (2024–) on the NASA Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE), and beyond.