Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Friday, March 22, 2013
First Image of Earth from LandSat 8
The LDCM/LandSat 8, which is launched from Vandenberg Air
Force Base on February 11, 2013 is started
to send Earth’s picture to the ground from the space. This week, the
Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) released its first images of Earth,
collected at 1:40 p.m. EDT on March 18.LDCM is performing as planned and everything
is on track for a May operational transition. LDCM is a joint mission of NASA
and the Department of Interior's U.S. Geological Survey.
According to NASA website, LDCM’s first instrument,
Operational Land Imager, or OLI instrument, that took the natural color image.
The natural color image showed the landscape in the colors our eyes would see,
but Landsat sensors also have the ability to see wavelengths of light that our
eyes cannot see. LDCM sees eleven bands within the electromagnetic spectrum,
the range of wavelengths of light. OLI 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. LDCM's second instrument, the Thermal InfraredSensor (TIRS) 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.
Good Book for GIS Beginners : Book II
Understanding GIS: An ArcGIS Project Workbook, is a very user-friendly written book for those interested to begin using ESRI ArcGIS Desktop 10 or ArcGIS Desktop 10.1 using real data from the City of Los Angeles' Department of Public Works, Bureau of Engineering's Mapping Division, and Department of Recreation and Parks and to manipulate it using the power of GIS.
Don't expect to become a GIS expert at the end because this is simply a good introduction to ArcGIS. The book guides the reader step-by-step, mouse-click-by mouse-click, decision-by-decision through a GIS project to determine for yourself which locations along the river are best suited for public recreational use in Los Angeles. At the end, you will have learned many of the fundamentals of GIS generally and ArcGIS specifically which aims at finding a suitable land parcel(s)for a new park area in Los Angeles .You use real data which comes in the companion DVD. When you reach the final stage in chapter 6 and follow all the careful steps to manually select the best areas and you learned why you do so, you discover in the following chapter (chapter 7) that you can do the same in a much quicker way by using a visual graphing tool, a marvel in my opinion of ArcGIS Desktop.
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