Author: Thomas Nauss
Date: 2025-08-21

# Landsat-8 Calibration

#### Thomas Nauss

#### 2025-08-21

The following example shows how to read a Landsat-8 data set downloaded from the USGS Earth Explorer and how to convert the bands’ scaled counts to radiance, reflectance and/or brightness temperature.

## Reading Landsat-8 data

We will use the test data set supplied with this package. In order to read the data set, just supply the filename (or list of filenames) to the `satellite()` function.

    library(satellite)

    ## Loading required package: raster

    ## Loading required package: sp

    path <- system.file("extdata", package = "satellite")
    files <- list.files(path, pattern = glob2rx("LC08*.TIF"), full.names = TRUE)
    sat <- satellite(files)

The meta data will automatically be loaded since (i) Landsat-8 is a known platform to the `satellite` package and (ii) the name of the meta data file is in accordance with the USGS conventions.

## Converting Landsat-8 scaled counts to physical units

In order to convert scaled counts of a Satellite object to radiance, reflectance and/or temperature, just supply it to the `convSC2Rad`, `convSC2Ref` or `convRad2BT` function.

    sat <- convSC2Rad(sat)
    sat <- convSC2Ref(sat)
    sat <- convRad2BT(sat)