Raw sensor counts before processing (VIIRS, Suomi-NPP, near real-time)
What it measures. The unprocessed sensor output from the VIIRS instrument: raw electronic counts plus the spacecraft's own housekeeping data, like where it was pointing and bus telemetry. There are no finished pictures or measurements here yet.
How it's made. Captured by the VIIRS instrument on the Suomi-NPP satellite and delivered in near real-time as the rawest packaged form of the data, before any calibration.
How & where you'd use it. This is a building-block input that processing pipelines turn into usable images and products; most people use the higher-level products derived from it rather than this directly.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2022-01-01 → ongoing
- Measured bySuomi-NPP (VIIRS)
- Processing levelLevel 1A
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
- FormatsNetCDF
- 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
VIIRS/NPP Raw Radiances in Counts 6-Min L1A Swath - NRT product contains the unpacked, raw VIIRS science, calibration and engineering data; the extracted ephemeris and attitude data from the spacecraft diary packets; and the raw ADCS and bus-critical spacecraft telemetry data from those packets, with a few critical fields extracted. The shortname for this product is VNP01_NRT.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="VNP01_NRT",
version="2",
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 LANCEMODISBrowsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.