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Full catalog/VJ102MOD
VJ102MOD·v2.1·dataset

Calibrated raw satellite imagery (VIIRS, NOAA-20, 750 m)

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

What it measures. Calibrated readings of how much light and heat energy the sensor recorded across 16 wavelength bands, from visible through infrared, at 750-meter detail, together with quality flags and location info.

How it's made. Produced from the VIIRS instrument on the NOAA-20 satellite by taking its raw measurements and converting them into calibrated, geolocated radiance and reflectance values.

How & where you'd use it. A foundational building-block product that most people use indirectly, through the higher-level products (like vegetation or temperature maps) that are built from it.

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 Moderate Resolution 6-Min L1B Swath 750 m, short-name VJ102MOD is VIIRS Level-1B calibrated radiances product that comprise sixteen moderate-resolution or M-bands, which have a spatial resolution of 750-meters at nadir. These M-bands comprise eleven reflective solar bands (RSB) and five thermal emissive bands (TEB). Each of the M-bands has 16 detectors in the along-track direction with 16 rows of pixels per scan that provide a 750-m resolution. Ranging in wavelengths from 0.402 µm to 12.49 µm, the M-bands are sensitive to visible, near-, shortwave-, mediumwave-, and longwave-infrared wavelengths. Derived from the NASA VIIRS L1A raw radiances, this product includes calibrated and geolocated radiance and reflectance data, quality flags, and granule- and collection-level metadata. In contrast to a MODIS L1B product, which temporally spans 5 minutes, the VIIRS L1B calibrated radiances product contains a nominal temporal duration of 6 minutes.

Get the data

vj102mod_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="VJ102MOD",
    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.