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Full catalog/VJ102DNB
VJ102DNB·v2.1·dataset

Nighttime lights (VIIRS NOAA-20, 750 m)

VIIRS/JPSS1 Day/Night Band 6-Min L1B Swath 750 m
land NASA LAADS Level 1B active NetCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. Records how much light the sensor's special day/night band picked up, sensitive enough to span everything from faint quarter-moon glow to full daylight.

How it's made. A calibrated radiance product from the VIIRS Day/Night Band on the NOAA-20 satellite, delivered in 6-minute swaths at 750 m detail.

How & where you'd use it. Best known for measuring city lights at night; it's a foundational input behind higher-level nighttime-lights and reflected-light products.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › INFRARED RADIANCESPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › REFLECTED INFRAREDSPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › VISIBLE WAVELENGTHS › VISIBLE RADIANCE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2018-01-05 → ongoing
  • Measured byNOAA-20 (VIIRS)
  • Processing levelLevel 1B
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsNetCDF-4
  • 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 VIIRS/JPSS1 Day/Night Band 6-Min L1B Swath 750 m, short-name VJ102DNB is platform-derived single NASA VIIRS panchromatic Day-Night band (DNB) calibrated radiance product. The DNB is one of the M-bands with an at-nadir spatial resolution of 750 meters (across the entire scan). The panchromatic DNB’s spectral wavelength ranges from 0.5 µm to 0.9 µm. It facilitates measuring night lights, reflected solar/lunar lights with a large dynamic range between a low of a quarter moon illumination to the brightest daylight. The spatial resolution of the instrument at viewing nadir is approximately 750 m for the DNB and the Moderate-resolution Bands and 375m for the Imagery bands. The DNB is aggregated to maintain nearly constant horizontal spatial resolution across the swath.

Get the data

vj102dnb_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="VJ102DNB",
    version="2.1",
    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 LAADS
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.