Landsat 8

Landsat sensors see the landscape not only in natural color, as people would see it, but also in wavelengths of light that our eyes cannot see. LDCM sees eleven bands within the electromagnetic spectrum, the range of wavelengths of light.
Operational Land Imager (OLI)
The OLI sensor collects light reflected from Earth's surface in nine of these bands. Wavelengths on the shorter side include the visible blue, green, and red bands. Wavelengths on the longer side include the near infrared and shortwave infrared. Different characteristics on the ground dictate the intensity of the reflection and emission of light in different bands, allowing scientists to distinguish between different surface features. To highlight differences across an image, analysts sometimes assign artificial colors to data from different spectral bands for display.
Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS)
The TIRS onboard LDCM detects light emitted from the surface in two even longer wavelengths called the thermal infrared. The intensity of the emitted light at the longer wavelengths measured by TIRS is a function of surface temperature. In the black-and-white image of the first thermal band on TIRS, warmer areas on the surface are brighter while cooler areas are dark. Clouds in the colder upper atmosphere stand out as black in stark contrast to a warmer ground surface background. The TIRS images were collected at exactly the same time and place as the OLI data, so all eleven bands can be used together.