An Instrument is a source of imagery — a satellite sensor, a private constellation, or your own uploaded data. Every Visual runs on one. This page explains the kinds of instruments Remote Miner offers and how to read what each one can do, so you can pick the right eyes for the question you’re asking.
The four tiers #
Instruments come in four tiers, shown as tabs (All / Public / Private / On-demand, plus your Custom ones) wherever you pick an instrument:
- Public — instruments owned by space agencies and open to everyone (Sentinel-2, Landsat, MODIS and more). They support automatic, live filtering: set your dates and cloud limits and the platform searches the archive on the spot, at no imagery cost.
- Private (marketplace) — commercial constellations from private providers, available through our marketplace. Their imagery is ordered and costs money; once delivered it lives in your company’s space.
- On-demand (agency hyperspectral) — the three agency hyperspectral archives PRISMA, Hyperion and EnMAP. Public, but with their own search-and-request workflow, availability limits and delivery times — see Hyperspectral Imagery.
- Custom — sensor definitions your own company creates, to bring your own imagery into the platform — see Custom Instruments.
Instrument types #
Independently of tier, each instrument has a type that tells you what kind of signal it captures:
- Multispectral — a handful of broad bands across visible and infrared; the everyday workhorse (Sentinel-2, Landsat).
- Hyperspectral — hundreds of narrow contiguous bands, resolving subtle mineral absorption features. EMIT is available as a normal public instrument; PRISMA, EnMAP and Hyperion are on-demand — see Hyperspectral Imagery.
- Radar — active microwave sensing that sees through cloud and works day or night (Sentinel-1 and other SAR sensors).
- Atmospheric — atmospheric-composition sensors (e.g. trace gases).
- Thematic — ready-made thematic products rather than raw imagery.
How to read an instrument’s specs #
Whether in the Library or the picker, each instrument shows the specs that matter for choosing it:
- Type and provider — what it is and who runs it.
- Ground Sample Distance (GSD) — the pixel size on the ground, in meters. Smaller means finer detail.
- Bands and their wavelengths — how many, and where in the spectrum they sit; hyperspectral instruments show a full spectral profile.
- Revisit period and launch date — how often it passes over and how far back its archive goes.
- For orderable instruments: acquisition modes (archive vs tasking) and pricing.
The exact instruments available to you depend on your company’s plan — the platform always shows the live list. To browse everything you can use, open the Library.