Farearth.com Website Review

pinkmatter's farearth global observer presents a live view of landsat imagery as it is downlinked by ground-stations around the world. real-time data is received, decoded and displayed within seconds of the satellite imaging an area. this means that every area of land on earth is imaged at least once every 16 days.  the satellite orbits at an altitude of 705 kilometers above the earth in a near polar orbit (around the earth from north pole to south pole). it is sun-synchronous which means that the satellite always pas*es the same point on earth at the same local time. if you live near the equator landsat 8 will pas* high above your head at 10:00 am in the morning every 16th day to image your neighbourhood.. ground receiving stations around the world downlink image data from the satellite when it pas*es over the station. the satellite takes images of the earth below and streams it down to the station in real-time. the station's antenna points toward the satellite and tracks it for as long as it can until it moves out of range. each station therefore receives the images of the areas around it. this is called the station's coverage circle and you can see it drawn on the map in the. image data is sent down to the station, decoded, processed and streamed to the farearth observer within seconds. landsat 8 has a pushbroom sensor which means that it scans the earth line by line, 185 kilometers wide. it continuously transmits data to the station antenna down below where it is decoded, processed and turned into images in real-time (yes, as fast as it is received!). these images are streamed to the farearth observer within seconds where you can view them in your browser. you see what landsat sees!. landsat 8 has insect eyes and can see colours invisible to the human eye. it has two onboard sensors and can see 11 colours called spectral bands. landsat's operational land imager (oli) sensor records 9 bands between 430 and 2300 nm, which means it can see colours ranging from blue to