The resolution of CORONA imagery was designed to mimic that of low-altitude, black-and-white aerial photographs, and thus is comparable to them in terms of the sites and features that can be resolved. In some parts of the Near East, aerial photographs derived either from government-sponsored mapping programs or from World Wars I and II can be acquired. If available, these images may offer higher spatial resolution than even the best CORONA missions and may pre-date CORONA by several decades. Examination of German reconnaissance aerial photos of Palestine acquired during World War I shows how valuable these images can be for archaeology, revealing the landscape as it appeared prior to the development that came with increased Jewish immigration over subsequent decades (Press 2011). In this area, CORONA imagery proved of less value than in other parts of the Near East, as the region had already been heavily built-up by the time CORONA was acquired in the 1960s. While aerial photos can be quite useful for archaeological analysis, the availability of such images is highly limited in both geographic and temporal terms. Furthermore, these images can be difficult to track down and expensive to acquire. Frequently, original films have deteriorated, leaving only contact prints or enlargements, and thus prohibiting or at least complicating rigorous processing. Even when films do exist, associated metadata such as camera focal length and average flying height are often unknown, limiting photogrammetric solutions to correction. In most areas of the Near East no such images exist. CORONA on the other hand offers comparable resolution to most aerial photographs along with systematic, large-scale regional coverage, often from several different years and seasons, which is easily and cheaply acquired. Moreover, the methods we have now developed enable efficient, rigorous geometric correction of these images.
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