Fig. 2

Landsat bandpass locations, band width, and band number for optical and thermal imaging sensors for the Landsat satellites: The MultiSpectral Scanner (MSS) on Landsats-1–3 (Bottom row). L-3 had 80 m pixels and a thermal band (not shown) at 240 m pixel resolution; L-3 was terminated March 1979. The Thematic Mapper (TM) (Row 2) on Landsat-4 and Landsat-5, introduced 30 m pixels for optical bands, adding three new bands (blue [1] and two SWIR [5, 7]) and a 120-m thermal band [6]. The Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) (Row 3) on Landsat-7 is similar to L-4 and L-5 but with a 15 m panchromatic Visible-Near-Infrared (VNIR [8]) band and a TIR band with 60 m pixels [6]. The Operational Land Imager (OLI) (Row 4) on Landsat-8 and Landsat-9 narrowed some bands and added two new bands [1, 9]; the 15-m pan band was limited to VIS [8]; and the TIR became two thermal bands TIRS1 and TIRS2 [10, 11] with 100 m pixels. The gray background shows regions of light (energy) transmission through the atmosphere to the Earth’s surface; in white areas, no solar energy gets to the land surface and back to the satellite, or for the thermal range, emitted from the surface. The common names for different wavelength regions are shown across the top of the figure. The numbering of the bands represents the order that the band was selected for inclusion on each Landsat. The atmospheric transmission values for this graphic were calculated in MODTRAN (MODerate resolution atmospheric TRANsmission computer code, MODTRAN 6, 2014) for a summertime mid-latitude hazy atmosphere (circa 5 km visibility). Graphic created by L. Rocchio & J. Barsi. Figure from https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/about/technical-information/