To Calibration and Beyond

       Today I finished calibrating my software & spectrometer (although it still took until after lunch), and began to brainstorm what I'll be measuring in the near future.  Having set up my sensors, Dr. lentilucci gave me a halcylon (not sure I'm spelling that correctly) diffuse reflecting disk and tasked me with creating a list of light sources to observe.  For the most part, I have a decent list, but the trick will be just to make sure to document all my measurements fully.  I think it should be cool.
       Tomorrow is when I really start making measurements.  For that I have two main issues, the first and primary one being getting my sources and making sure I have them in an environment free of optical noise, and the second is, like mentioned before, going into enough detail in categorizing them and ensuring that everything I measure lines up generally with the scientific literature out on the web.  However, I feel that none of that should be too hard.  To be completely honest, lugging around all my equipment may be the trickiest part...
       I also attended the undergraduate lecture today, which was, coincidentally, on remote sensing application, primarily in forestry and ecology.  It covered a lot of topics within that, but one I found very interesting was how remote sensing and airborne analysis of commercial farms and vineyards could be used to isolate sick or infected plants and trees (specifically in this case apple trees) and use that data to specifically target certain areas for spraying or removal to both save money and prevent increased groundwater runoff, and for vineyards monitor irrigation usage and control where the water was going without having to take all your measurements on foot.  Overall, although some parts were a bit slow, I found it to be an interesting presentation.