Emissivity target that provides positive and negative differential temperature patterns relative to a background temperature

Abstract

An electro-optical target comprising an emissivity target and a controlled background source that has a temperature greater than, less than or equal to the temperature of the emissivity target. Appropriate adjustment of the temperatures of the emissivity target and heated controlled background source causes the "apparent" temperature of the emissivity target to be less than the specular ambient or background temperature, effectively emitting a negative temperature (delta T) relative to the background temperature produced by the controlled background source. It is useful to have an electro-optical target that emits a negative temperature (delta T) for minimum resolvable temperature testing of FLIR systems, for example, without cooling any of the components of the electro-optical target.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.