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How to Download Sentinel 2 Satellite Imagery (and display it in QGIS)
May 12, 2025
Learn to download Sentinel 2 satellite images for free from the source at copernicus.eu. Then learn how to import and display the satellite images in QGIS. More Sentinel-2 tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoaxBPcx2tRDNJlI8KXkVMl0PO-JCbEqM Check out my website for MORE: https://opensourceoptions.com
View Video Transcript
0:00
Satellite imagery is very useful for a
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lot of purposes from just visualizing
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the land to performing quantitative
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analysis. And there are a lot of free
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sources of satellite imagery out there.
0:13
And I'm going to show you how to access
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one of those today, which is the
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Sentinel 2 data set. To access Sentinel
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2, which is one of the higher resolution
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satellites with repeat coverage, we're
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going to go to
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dataspace.capernicus.eu. So,
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dataspace.napernicus.eu. I'm just going
0:32
to search for this here in Google. You
0:34
can see the website here, and you can
0:37
see some of the the options you have.
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We're going to go find the Sentinel 2
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data, but I want to take you right
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through the website to show you how that
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works. So, we'll just type into our
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address bar here,
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database.capernicus.eu, and we'll go
0:50
directly to the website. Now, notice
0:53
here I am logged into my account here.
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You will need to create a free account
0:57
in order to download the data. You can
1:00
do that um from multiple web pages here.
1:02
Uh you can do it from this web page or
1:04
you can do it from the browser. Next,
1:06
we'll go to the Capernacus browser here.
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This will open in a new tab and it's
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going to bring up a map that shows us
1:13
the different data sources available
1:15
through Capernacus and allow us to
1:18
filter those data sets. Okay. So, you
1:21
can see the map here of the world. I'm
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going to zoom into an area that I'm
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familiar with and know when I might be
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able to get some imagery that is of
1:27
interest to me. So, I'm going to zoom in
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on the United States. I'm going to come
1:31
up here to this area in uh northern
1:34
Utah, southern Idaho, where we see this
1:38
lake, Bear Lake, very beautiful
1:40
lake. And now what I want to do is I
1:43
want to download some
1:46
data. And to do that, I'm going to click
1:49
on search here. So we have this we have
1:51
these visualize and these search tabs.
1:54
Visualize will let us see the data that
1:57
are available. So we can come and we can
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search for a date range here um or a
2:03
specific date. We can show the latest
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date. We can do a lot of different
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things. You see here that if I click
2:08
show latest date um and I can click true
2:11
color uh we're looking at imagery for
2:14
the latest date and it's going to show
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right up in the browser. You can see the
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data here is still loading and we can
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see this green bar coming across the top
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that will show us when the data has
2:25
fully loaded. Um, so that's how you can
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visualize data. What I'm really
2:29
interested in is actually downloading
2:32
some data for analysis. And the way I'm
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going to do that is I'm going to go to
2:37
search and I'm going to select my data
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source here. I want to select Sentinel
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2. Um we have one sensor on Sentinel 2
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which is the MSI sensor and from that
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sensor we have two different data
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products. We have level 1C L1C and L2A.
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Now it's important to know the
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differences in these levels so you can
3:00
get the download that is most correct
3:02
for what you're doing. And I will
3:04
explain these to you. So L1C is a top of
3:08
atmosphere reflectance. What that means
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is the satellite is above the atmosphere
3:13
of the earth. The earth's atmosphere
3:15
inter interacts with light as that light
3:17
travels from the earth to the satellite.
3:20
And so you're not getting a the so the
3:23
atmosphere alters what the satellite
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sees from what you would see if you were
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on the ground or flying in an airplane
3:28
below uh the bulk of the atmosphere.
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Okay. So this is a top of atmosphere.
3:32
It's not corrected for the atmosphere.
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Level 2A is what we call a surface
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reflectance product, meaning it has been
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atmospherically corrected to account for
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the effects of the atmosphere. So, for
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most applications, you're probably going
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to want the level 2A data. Some of you
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may want the level 1C data, and you'll
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probably know who you are based on that
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description I just gave you. So, I'm
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going to select Sentinel 2. I'm going to
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select the L2A data. I'm going to come
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down and set a time range. I want to
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select a time when I know things will be
4:01
glean, which I'm going to select in
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2024. And we're going to go into the
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month of June. And we'll just try to
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find all the images in the month of
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June. So, my starting date is there. Um,
4:12
and I'm going to go change this back to
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2024, June, and we'll go to June 30th.
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Okay. Now, I've set these. I want to set
4:19
a cloud cover percentage. I want less
4:22
than 20% cloud cover. I want to be able
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to see the land surface. And now I'm
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going to go in and I'm going to
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search. All right. And this might take
4:32
just a minute to return the results that
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I am looking for here. Okay. So now
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we've got these results. We can see a
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thumbnail over on the side. Um we can
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see the footprint of that image here.
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Okay. And I can zoom out uh to see the
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full footprint of the image a little
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better. Okay. And now um I can zoom to
4:56
the
4:57
product. I can add it to the workspace
5:00
or I can download the product. So if
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you'll notice here we have the time. So
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we have
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2024 623. So June 23rd
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um June
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18th, June 15th. Okay. So we can see all
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the images available that meet my
5:19
criteria. And once I find the image that
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I'm interested in, that most meets my
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needs, I can go and download that. So,
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let's go over here and let's go ahead
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and um download this one here. This
5:30
looks about what I'm looking for on June
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23rd. It appears to have the least cloud
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cover from the uh from this thumbnail. I
5:39
can visualize this and it will take a
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minute to load and show me exactly what
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that image looks like in the browser.
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Let's just give this a minute to load
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up.
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So there you go. You can see that our
5:53
image has loaded and we can get a look
5:55
at at what this area looks like from
5:58
that loaded image. All right, this is
6:00
the image I want. Um, I'm going to go
6:02
back to my search and I'm going to
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download this image by clicking the
6:07
download product button here. Now, this
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is going to take a little while. You
6:10
notice this product is just over a,000
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megabytes, about a gigabyte. It's going
6:15
to take a little while for this download
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to happen. Um, once this progress bar
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completes, it's going to open up uh an
6:21
option for me to save that to a file,
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and I'll bring you back when we get to
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that point. So, the download is ready.
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Now, I'm going to put this in my
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downloads folder. I'm going to make a
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new folder, and I'm going to call it
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Sentinel 2A
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[Music]
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uh or sorry, I'm going to call it
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Sentinel 2 L2A.
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and we'll save this right in here. It's
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going to come down as a zip folder. It
6:53
might take another minute just to
6:55
download that because it is a large
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file. And we can open up the downloads
7:01
here just to
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see when that gets
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done. Okay. So, we can see that it is
7:11
complete
7:12
here and it's a zip folder. I'm going to
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extract these files. So, I'm going to
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right click on it. I'm going to show
7:18
more options. I have sevenzip installed.
7:22
If you do not have sevenzip installed,
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you can come and do extract all. Um, I
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prefer to use sevenzip and I'm going to
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extract the
7:31
files. Gives me this option here. And
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I'm going to say
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okay. And then those files are
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extracted. Now, you'll notice here this
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is a safe folder. That's the format that
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uh these files are saved
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in. And actually, what I want to do is
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I'm going to delete this real
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quick. And I'm going to extract these
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files one more
8:01
time. And uh I'm going to use sevenzip.
8:05
And I'm going to extract here. And this
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will eliminate that extra directory. So
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we have the safe file here and inside of
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this we have all the metadata and all
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the data associated with the sentinel
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files. So if I go into granle and into
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this folder and into image data
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um now I have all these band data sets
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here. So I have band two, three, four
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and eight. And you'll notice here that
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these are the resolutions. So band I
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believe there's two three four and eight
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are 10 meter bands. There's there's 20
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meter bands which are we have those in
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one 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. Okay. So we have
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those sampled to those bands and then we
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also have 60 meter bands. Um and so we
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can have these bands sampled at whatever
9:00
level we need to have them. All right.
9:03
So there's we get the sentinel data. We
9:06
now have this downloaded. we can now go
9:08
pull these in and perform analysis with
9:11
them in whichever environment uh we
9:14
desire to do that. So let's actually go
9:16
and open up QGIS to take a look at some
9:20
of the at these data
9:23
sets. Okay, so QGIS is open. Let's go to
9:27
the browser and let's add in these
9:31
files. So, we can go to
9:34
downloads and looking for the Sentinel
9:37
2A folder
9:46
here. And I'm not seeing
9:49
it. Oh, here we go. Sentinel 2A
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L2A. And this will take just a minute to
9:57
open. There's a lot of data in there.
10:04
And we'll just keep going down into our
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granle folder and our image data. And
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let's pull in
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um some
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uh R10. So let's grab bands two, three,
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and
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four. Let's add those
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in. And there you can see that we have
10:27
our image
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data. Now, let me go
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um real
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quick and
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uh we're going to load in a base
10:43
map. Close this down. Let's go to XYZ
10:46
tiles. Let's pull an open street map
10:48
just so that we can see we're in the
10:50
right area. And if we turn off these
10:54
layers here, pull this down there, uh
10:57
you'll see that we are in the right
11:00
area. Okay. So now let's create a
11:03
virtual raster. So we can go to raster,
11:07
miscellaneous, build virtual raster. I'm
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going to select all three of
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these. So we got band two, three, and
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four. We're going to say okay.
11:20
Um, we can make this the lowest
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resolution. We want to place each input
11:26
file into a separate
11:28
band. And here we're going to we can
11:32
just save this as a temporary file. And
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I'll I'll show you how this works. Let's
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go ahead and run this. Now we can close.
11:40
And now you can see we have bands one,
11:43
two, and three. And if we go over to
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layer
11:51
styling and zoom in, you can see we now
11:53
have some color imagery
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there. Okay.
12:04
Um, we want to do this red, green, blue.
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And right now we're showing blue, green,
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red. So if we reverse this to three,
12:11
two, one.
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Now we get the true color image and you
12:15
can see we have that satellite imagery
12:17
that's just pulled right up there in
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QGIS. All right. So that's how we can
12:22
easily get the Sentinel data, download
12:25
it and bring it into QGIS for
12:27
visualization and for analysis.