Imaging spectrometers have been recently developed as a new generation of airborne optical remote sensing systems specifically designed to acquire this hyperspectral information. Variations in material composition has potential to produce shifts in the position and shape of absorption bands in the spectrum. With the diverse chemistry of the materials, spectral signatures can be complex and sometimes difficult to interpret. However, this effect is now decreasing with the increasing knowledge of the variation in spectral features. 1.2 Nomenclature of Spectroscopy Imaging spectroscopy has many names in the remote sensing community, including imaging spectrometry, hyperspectral imaging, and ultraspectral imaging.
Spectroscopy is the study of electromagnetic radiation.
Terms like laboratory spectrometer, spectroscopist, reflectance spectroscopy, and thermal emission spectroscopy are in common use in this sub-discipline of remote sensing. Measurement-related terms such as spectrometrist and reflectance spectrometry are now rarely used. Hyperspectral datasets generally contain at least 16 contiguous bands of high spectral resolution over a region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Although no such sensor has been designed with this complexity, it is regarded as the future of imaging spectroscopy. Multi-temporal analysis of community scale vegetation stress with imaging spectroscopy .