Sharp black-and-white satellite photos (GeoEye-1)
What it measures. Very sharp black-and-white (panchromatic) satellite photos of land, capturing fine detail at well under half a meter per pixel, fine enough to pick out small features on the ground.
How it's made. Captured by the commercial GeoEye-1 satellite and delivered as a sensor-corrected but raw, un-projected product (an early processing stage before being fitted to a map).
How & where you'd use it. Valuable for any work needing extremely detailed imagery, often paired with color bands for crisper maps. Access is restricted under a government license, so investigators must be approved first.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2009-01-03 → ongoing
- Measured byGEOEYE-1 (GIS)
- Processing levelLevel 1B
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
- FormatsNITF21NCDRD, GeoTIFF
- StatusACTIVE
What you can do with it
- Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
- Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
- Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description
The GeoEye-1 Level 1B Panchromatic Imagery collection contains satellite imagery acquired from Vantor, Inc. (formerly known as Maxar Technologies) by the Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program. Imagery is collected by the GeoEye-1 satellite using the GeoEye-1 Imaging System across the global land surface from September 2008 to the present. This data product includes panchromatic imagery with a spatial resolution of 0.46m at nadir (0.41m before summer 2013) and a temporal resolution of approximately 3 days. The data are provided in National Imagery Transmission Format (NITF) and GeoTIFF formats. This level 1B data is sensor corrected and is an un-projected (raw) product. The data potentially serve a wide variety of applications that require high resolution imagery. Data access is restricted based on a National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) license, and investigators must be approved by the CSDA Program.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="GE01_Pan_L1B",
version="1",
bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9), # your area (W,S,E,N)
temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"), # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results) # stream straight from CSDA Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package. Official links
- CSDA Program User Authorization Request Form VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- CSDA Program Data Evaluation Report VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- GeoEye-1 Data Sheet VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- Data download GET DATA
- NextView End User License Agreement VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- CSDA Program Data Request Form GET DATA
- CSDA Program Public Data Release Form VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- Commercial Satellite Imagery Orthorectification and manipulation with GDAL VIEW RELATED INFORMATION