Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

A hyperspectral camera is an imaging device that captures much more information than a standard camera. While a regular camera sees the world in three colors, red, green, and blue, a hyperspectral camera can detect hundreds of colors across a wide range of wavelengths, including some that are invisible to us, such as infrared or ultraviolet light.

Hyperspectral Cameras: The Rainbow Example

An easy way to understand a hyperspectral camera is to think about a rainbow. A rainbow occurs when sunlight passes through raindrops, breaking apart into its component colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. These colors represent the different wavelengths of visible light. Now, imagine taking a picture of a rainbow with a regular camera. That camera would group all these colors into just three broad categories: red, green, and blue because that's all it can see, representing each rainbow color as a combination of the three. But a hyperspectral camera works differently.

What Does a Hyperspectral Camera Do with a Rainbow?

A hyperspectral camera doesn't just group the rainbow into red, green, and blue; it splits it into hundreds of very narrow slices of color. For example:

• Instead of just red, it might see light red, deep red, reddish-orange, and every subtle shade in between.
• It doesn't stop at what we see; it can detect infrared (beyond red) and ultraviolet (beyond violet), parts of the rainbow our eyes cannot see.

This means that while a regular camera gives you a simplified version of the rainbow, a hyperspectral camera creates a super-detailed map of myriad wavelengths of light, including ones outside the visible spectrum.

Tangible Example

Let's say you want to study leaves on a tree. To a regular camera, all the leaves might look green, just like a single strip of green in a rainbow. But a hyperspectral camera would detect slight color differences:

• Some leaves might reflect more yellow-green if they're healthy.
• Other leaves might reflect more brown-green if they're stressed or sick.
• The camera could even spot infrared signals, helping scientists to understand, e.g., if the leaf is photosynthesizing properly, creating a unique spectral fingerprint for the leaf, which can reveal specific information that standard cameras cannot detect.

Therefore, using the rainbow analogy, the hyperspectral camera takes what looks like a single green band and splits it into a rich spectrum of greens, revealing hidden details that would otherwise be missed.