GOES-16 and Landsat 8

These infrared satellite images were collected on May 24, 2019 over the Washington, D.C. area.

The larger image comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) 16, a geostationary spacecraft at 22,500 miles. The near infrared image has a resolution of 1 kilometer per pixel. The smaller image comes from the NASA/U.S. Geological Survey’s Landsat 8, a polar-orbiting satellite that circles the Earth at 438 miles to capture new imagery of the planet’s surface every 16 days. GOES 16 captures imagery of the conterminous United States once every five minutes. These Landsat 8 and GOES images were collected four minutes apart.

Calibration and validation teams from NOAA and the USGS  are among those exploring ways data from geostationary and polar-orbiting sensors could be used together to improve accuracy and facilitate the integration of coarse, moderate, and high-resolution datasets from multiple sources.