
Although each image is 2D, the Earth itself is 3D. In order to stitch together images, they first need to be projected onto a 2D representation of the Earth, called a coordinate reference system (CRS). Most people are familiar with equal angle representations like Mercator that distort the size of regions (Greenland looks larger than Africa even though Africa is 15x larger), but there are many other CRSs that are commonly used. Each dataset may use a different CRS, and each image within a single dataset may also be in a unique CRS. In order to use data from multiple layers, they must all share a common CRS, otherwise the data won't be properly aligned. For those who aren't familiar with remote sensing data, this can be a daunting task.



