Derivation and validation of the stray light correction algorithm for the thermal infrared sensor onboard Landsat 8

The details of the operational stray light correction algorithm are presented here along with validation studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm in removing the stray light artifacts over a stressing range of Landsat/TIRS scene conditions. Results show that the magnitude of the banding artifact is reduced by half on average over the current (uncorrected) product and that the absolute radiometric error is reduced to approximately 0.5% in both spectral bands on average (well below the 2% requirement). All studies presented here indicate that the implementation of the stray light algorithm will lead to greatly improved performance of the TIRS instrument, for both spectral bands.