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Full catalog/VJ202MOD
VJ202MOD·v2.1·dataset

Raw calibrated satellite imagery (VIIRS NOAA-21, 750 m)

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

What it measures. Calibrated satellite imagery across sixteen color bands spanning visible light through several infrared wavelengths, giving both how much energy each band recorded and how reflective the surface is.

How it's made. Created from the VIIRS instrument on the NOAA-21 satellite, calibrated and placed on the map at 750-meter resolution from the raw sensor data.

How & where you'd use it. A foundational imagery product that feeds many higher-level products on land, ocean, and atmosphere; specialists use it to build maps of vegetation, fires, surface temperature, and more.

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 Moderate Resolution 6-Min L1B Swath 750m, short-name VJ202MOD is the Joint Polar-orbiting Satellite System-2 (JPSS-2/NOAA-21; referred to hereafter as J2) platform-derived NASA Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) L1B 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. 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

vj202mod_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="VJ202MOD",
    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.