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.

Landsat bands

For further information, see OLI on the NASA website.