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Full catalog/nightlights-hd-monthly
nightlights-hd-monthly·dataset

Monthly High-Definition Night-Time Lights

Black Marble High Definition Nightlights Monthly Dataset
land NASA VEDA COG
In plain English

What it measures. Shows the monthly glow of artificial lights at night, with darker areas indicating fewer lights and less activity and brighter areas more. The data is cleaned to remove moonlight and other interference.

How it's made. Built from NASA's Black Marble night-lights product, derived from satellite measurements of light at night.

How & where you'd use it. Tracks month-to-month changes in human activity, electrification, and recovery after disruptions.

What's measured

nightlightsmonthly

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2019-01-01 → 2022-03-31
  • Spatial extent-122.636, -37.08, 174.96, 54.585
  • FormatsCOG

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 High Definition Nightlights dataset is processed to eliminate light sources, including moonlight reflectance and other interferences. Darker colors indicate fewer night lights and less activity. Lighter colors indicate more night lights and more activity.

Get the data

veda_access.py
# NASA VEDA — open STAC API, anonymous (cloud-optimized GeoTIFFs)
from pystac_client import Client

cat = Client.open("https://openveda.cloud/api/stac")
col = cat.get_collection("nightlights-hd-monthly")
items = list(col.get_items())          # browse the analysis-ready COGs
# open an asset with rioxarray:
# import rioxarray; da = rioxarray.open_rasterio(items[0].assets["cog_default"].href)
NASA VEDA is an open STAC catalog — browse and stream the cloud-optimized GeoTIFFs anonymously (no login).