Landsat and Sentinel image search results is powered by Developmentseed new Satellite API. Landsat and Sentinel images previews are from USGS Earth Explorer and Sentinel on AWS S3 (via Sinergise). This project is powered.

Sep 27, 2013 • Speeding around the Earth at 16,800 mph (27,000 kph), two Landsat satellites are quietly, expertly watching and recording changes in Earth’s lands from space. They are gathering data for people to make maps–all kinds of wonderful maps–of our cities growing, rivers flooding, lava flowing from volcanic eruptions, forests expanding or shrinking, crops greening through the growing season, and even of evidence of pollution. One of the most wonderful aspects of Landsat is that all the data are available to everyone, so people can use Landsat to make maps of their own. Landsat satellites are special in many ways. They record the entire global land surface every season, every year– and they have been doing it since 1972. They tell the story of how our landscapes have been changing for over 40 years!

The Landsat 5 satellite even made it to the Guinness Book of World Records for having the longest life of any satellite in history: almost 29 years. The engineers and scientists overcame dozens of difficult technical challenges to keep this valuable satellite flying and delivering data. “The efforts of the Landsat team were heroic,” said Jim Irons, project scientist for Landsat 8. At left, a visitor to the Smithsonian Mall explores a Landsat scene of Washington DC on Earth Day 2012. How to convert idx sub to srt.

At right, thousands of Landsat scenes together make up a mosaic of the continental United States. Credit: NASA. Landsat provides images of Earth at a resolution of 30 m, about the size of a baseball infield. People are too small to appear in a Landsat scene, but neighborhoods can be seen. Larger streets and schools, shopping centers, and most open spaces are visible, as are glaciers and volcanic eruptions. Landsat satellites measure the same colors of light that your eyes see, which are combined shades of red, green, and blue light. Satellite images made with red, green, and blue show the Earth as you would see it if you were in space.

Below is an example of how you might see the volcano Mount Etna erupting in 2001, using Landsat’s visible wavelengths. You can see lots of smoke and ash billowing from the volcano. Volcanoes: Where’s the Heat? But Landsat lets us see more than smoke and ash clouds. We can also see heat being reflected from the hot volcanic surface, using infrared light that our eyes alone cannot detect. Software for Landsat data analysis helps us to translate data on the infrared light into images we can see.