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Landsat 8 starting regular operations

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Yesterday the USGS started regular operation of Landsat 8 and is now distributing the images in near real time (with only a few hours delay between acquisition and availability).  They are also making available data already acquired during the last month so there are already quite a lot of images available.  There is no detailed information yet to what extend the acquisition plan has changed from Landsat 7 (i.e. at what times of year which areas are covered) – i hope this will still be added.

Here a few examples from the new satellite. The images have been somewhat compensated for atmosphere influence in comparison to the original data:

Eastern Greenland: on the left the normal image (LC80040042013146LGN00) and on the right the one taken during the satellite’s way back (LC80502402013148LGN00) with different sun position. Since the satellite’s way back is on the night side of earth this kind of image pair is only available in polar regions during summer:

And here a magnified crop:

Mount Damavand in northern Iran (LC81640352013131LGN00):

Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania (LC81690622013150LGN00):

Puncak Jaya in New Guinea with the glaciers hardly visible between the clouds (LC81030632013136LGN01) :

And finally a better known area in the western Alps (LC81960282013147LGN00):

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