(Q) How did you conceive of this project?
(A) I’d been playing around with Twitter automation stuff, and was looking for a project. I had also recently seen some stuff like the Libra Landsat browser, so Landsat was in my mind. I guess I just put the two together.
(Q) How does the @LandsatBot pick the images it is going to display?
(A) It picks a random point on the Earth, then does a search for cloud-free (<10% cloud) Landsat 8 images containing that point. It then picks an image at random. There's also a filter which prevents really boring images—it checks if there's above a certain level of variability in the pixel values. If any of this fails (no images available, etc), it just tries again until it finds one that works.
(Q) What is the @LandsatBot image tweeting frequency?
(A) Once an hour, on the hour. It sometimes tweets more often if I’m testing things, or less often if it’s crashing because I’ve messed up, but it’s supposed to be once an hour.
Example @LandsatBot tweet:
![Natural-color Landsat 8 image of an algae bloom in Lake Erie. The bloom appears green and contrasts with blue water.](https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/erie_oli_2017269-1024x576.jpg)
Be Part of What’s Next: Emerging Applications of Landsat at AGU24
Anyone making innovative use of Landsat data to meet societal needs today and during coming decades is encouraged to submit and abstract for the upcoming “Emerging Science Applications of Landsat” session at AGU24.