The land area seen in an ETM+ browse is not common to all bands. The image planes are actually staggered according to the following band order arrangement: 8, 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 5, 6. For an image collected on a descending pass, band 8 covers more land area to the west than band 1 while band 1 covers more land area to the east. This band staggering effect can be seen in the browse image above. The browse image bands, 5,4,3 are placed in RGB color space. Band 5 reaches furthest to the east as evidenced by the red margin on the right side of the image. Though not as clear, a blue margin exists on the left side of the browse due to band 3's more western position.

When viewing a browse for geographic coverage it's important to keep the band staggering effect in mind. For example, the panchromatic band starts approximately 500 meters before band 5 but also ends 500 meters earlier. Knowledge of band offsets will prevent coverage surprises when examining a product for the first time.