Introduction
Creating satellite imagery is quite easy and really a lot of fun. You can see the world in a completely different way. Not to mention, some of those images make for a great desktop background! :)
Software/Hardware Requirements. Landsat imagery is one of the most ubiquitous satellite image types, and a lot of effort has gone into making it easy to access and use. For the most part, Landsat imagery can be used in ArcGIS or other GIS applications without any special processing. Most Landsat images obtained either through USGS.
- Software/Hardware Requirements. Landsat imagery is one of the most ubiquitous satellite image types, and a lot of effort has gone into making it easy to access.
- Currently Landsat-5 and Landsat-7 are still in orbit. The USGS recently stopped acquiring images from Landsat-5 due to electronic component failure. Landsat-5 was launched in 1984 as a three year mission but had been producing imagery for over 27 years. Over 5 million images have been downlinked since the satellite went operational.
In this tutorial, we're going to focus on imagery from Landsat 8, a NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and USGS (United States Geological Survey) satellite. However, this can easily apply to older versions of Landsat data (Landsat 7 and earlier).
What is Landsat 8?
Landsat 8 was launched in 2013. It constantly takes pictures of Earth and can see the entire planet in 16 days. The two instruments on board, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS), Landsat 8 can record data from 11 different wavelength bands (discussed later). Only three of these bands comprise of visible wavelengths. This means that there are 8 other bands of wavelengths that we couldn't see without Landsat 8's sensors. There are some example images using these other wavelengths attached.
Why do you want to make images from Landsat 8's data?
![Software Citra Satellite Landsat Images Software Citra Satellite Landsat Images](/uploads/1/2/6/5/126527899/387916635.png)
Well, why not?? It sounds pretty cool, right? Here are a few reasons you might want to make images:
- For fun - the Earth is a beautiful place
- Education - you can learn a lot about the world, how it works, and how humans impact our planet by studying these images
- Mapping - maps are useful!
- Visualizing trends - If you use data over a period of weeks, months, or years, you can see some significant trends in temperature, city expansions, foliage, etc. These could be natural or anthropogenic (human-caused) effects.
- Agricultural health - plants reflect certain wavelengths of light depending on their health. With this, farmers can use Landsat to see which parts of their crops are healthy and which are stressed. Or, you can use it to study forest health!
- These are only a few reasons. I'm sure you can find your own as well!
Objective
Landsat Satellite Definition
The objective of this tutorial is to demonstrate the process of creating an image from Landsat data. Note that this does not show you how to normalize the data, analyze the data, or perform calculations from your processed data… I am by no means even close to an expert at using this data so I am in no place to teach such methods.
*Note: This will focus primarily on Landsat 8 data sets. There are some subtle differences between Landsat 8 and Landsat 7 data sets (as well as even earlier versions of the Landsat series). These differences will be very briefly discussed below. Therefore, this tutorial can be used with the older data sets with appropriate corrections.
Cara Download Citra Landsat
Completion Time
This tutorial should only take about an hour to complete. This does not include time searching for a location or downloading data.