Landsat 8 was launched Febuary 11, 2013 to fill the data gap left by Landsat4/5(RIP) and the partially functioning Landsat 7. Landsat 8 provides 11 bands ranging in spectrums from visible light, near infrared, and to thermal energy.
| Band # | Purpose | Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Coastal/Aerosol: Deep Blues\Violets | 30m |
| 2 | Visible Light: Blue | 30m |
| 3 | Visible Light: Green | 30m |
| 4 | Visible Light: Red | 30m |
| 5 | Near Infrared NIR: Vegetation | 30m |
| 6 | Shortwave Infrared SWIR: Soils\Geology | 30m |
| 7 | Shortwave Infrared SWIR: Soils\Geology | 30m |
| 8 | Panchromatic: RGB Together | 15m |
| 9 | High Reflectivity: Cirrus Clouds | 30m |
| 10 | Thermal Infrared TIRS 1: Heat | 100m |
| 11 | Thermal Infrared TIRS 2: Heat | 100m |
Sources:
Mapbox: Putting Landsat 8 Bands to Work USGS: Landsat Data Product USGS: Landsat Band Desigination NASA: Landsat DCM
After the scene has been downloaded, you will have a compressed file ranging from 750mb to a 1gb. To uncompress the file:
$ tar -zxvf LC80370372013169LGN00.tar.gz
The uncompressed bundle produces 13 files: 11 Tiff files for each Band, a BQA Tiff for scene's quality assesment, and a *MTL.txt file with metadata. The MTL.txt will be used to complete the calculations in processing a scene correctly.
From the terminal, change to the script's directory and use the python interpreter to run the script. Designate the full path of the Landsat's MTL.txt file.
$ python landsat_proc.py home/landsat/LC80370372013169LGN00_MTL.txt