Operational Land Imager (OLI)
About
The Operational Land Imager (OLI), on board Landsat-8 measures in the visible, near infrared, and short wave infrared portions of the spectrum. Its images have 15 m panchromatic and 30 m multi-spectral spatial resolutions along a 185 km wide swath, covering wide areas of the Earth’s landscape while providing sufficient resolution to distinguish features like urban centres, farms, forests and other land uses. The entire Earth falls within view once every 16 days due to Landsat-8’s near-polar orbit.
The Landsat Operational Land Imager (OLI) uses a technological approach demonstrated by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) sensor flown on NASA's experimental EO-1 satellite, which operated from 2000 to 2017.
OLI provides two new spectral bands in respect to the Landsat-7 ETM+ instrument, one tailored especially for detecting cirrus clouds (band 9, new Near Infra-Red (NIR) band) and the other for coastal zone observations (band 1, new deep blue visible channel). It measures in the visible, NIR, and Shortwave Infra-Red (SWIR) portions of the electromagnetic spectrum and offers 15 m panchromatic, and 30 m multi-spectral (VIS/NIR/SWIR) spatial resolution. The scene size is 185x180 km.
OLI was built by the Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation.
| Band No. | Band Name | Spectral Range (nm) | Use of data |
| 1 | New Deep Blue | 433-453 | Aerosol/coastal zone |
| 2 | Blue | 450-515 | Pigments/scatter/coastal |
| 3 | Green | 525-600 | Pigments/coastal |
| 4 | Red | 630-680 | Pigments/coastal |
| 5 | NIR | 845-885 | Foliage/coastal |
| 6 | SWIR 2 | 1560-1660 | Foliage |
| 7 | SWIR 3 | 10.4-12.5 (TIR) | Plant heat stress, thermal mapping, soil mapping |
| 8 | PAN | 500-680 | Image sharpening |
| 9 | SWIR | 1360-1390 | Cirrus cloud detection |
Landsat bands
For further information, see OLI on the NASA website.
Data Description
ESA offers to registered users the access through the Landsat-8 portal to the following data collections:
Further information can be found on the Products Information page.
OLI Cal/Val
The goal of OLI calibration and validation activities is to verify the accuracy and quality of data the instrument acquires.
OLI Quality Control Reports
Quality Control Reports are available for OLI in three different varieties covering quality monitoring, data unavailability and any product anomalies.