Geometric accuracy of Ikonos: zoom in

Pioneering in the world, the high-resolution satellite Ikonos imagery has revolutionary changed the market - users now have the unique opportunity to get satellite images with spatial resolution comparable to middle-scale aerial photos. In our study, we tried to find an answer why such images, having submetre spatial resolution, still contain planimetric errors measured in dozens and even hundreds of metres. This paper is aimed at to not only show to potential users of high-resolution satellite images the main sources of image geometric distortions, but to uncover the errors, hardly to be corrected without possessing precise information about particular conditions on the spot at the moment of image acquisition, and evaluate sensibility of the corresponding image correction models for variations of such data.