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Full catalog/VJ202DNB
VJ202DNB·v2.1·dataset

Nighttime lights (VIIRS NOAA-21, 750 m)

VIIRS/JPSS2 Day/Night Band 6-Min L1B Swath 750 m V2.1
land NASA LAADS Level 1B active netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. Records how much light the day/night band captured, spanning from very dim moonlit scenes to bright daylight.

How it's made. A calibrated radiance product from the VIIRS Day/Night Band on the NOAA-21 satellite, in 6-minute swaths at 750 m detail.

How & where you'd use it. Underlies nighttime city-lights mapping and other low-light studies; mostly used as an input to higher-level products.

What's measured

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

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2023-02-10 → ongoing
  • Measured byNOAA-21 (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/JPSS2 Day/Night Band 6-Min L1B Swath 750 m, short-name VJ202DNB, of the Joint Polar-orbiting Satellite System-2 (JPSS-2/NOAA-21; referred to hereafter as J2) 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 micrometer to 0.9 micrometer. 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 J2 VIIRS radiometric calibration Level-1B reprocessing includes a few calibration updates for the reflective solar bands (RSB), but no significant changes for the day-night band (DNB) or thermal emissive bands (TEB).

Get the data

vj202dnb_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="VJ202DNB",
    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.