The imager uses a north-south array of eight silicon diode detectors to image the earth, and the sounder uses an array of four similar detectors, primarily for cloud detection. With each east-west or west-east traversal of the scan mirror, the imager thus produces eight adjacent east-west lines and the sounder, four. These detectors are not calibrated on orbit, but their data are processed to maintain image quality, as is described in the remainder of this section.

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