Given multispectral observations of the radiances emanating from the earth surface and the atmosphere, what can be inferred about the state of either?

Observations depend on

• telescope characteristics (resolving power, diffraction)
• detector characteristics (signal to noise)
• communications bandwidth (bit depth)
• spectral intervals (window, absorption band)
• time of day (daylight visible)
• atmospheric state (T, Q, clouds)
• earth surface (Ts, vegetation cover)