Where each nighttime-lights pixel sits on Earth (VIIRS, near-real-time)
What it measures. The precise Earth location of each pixel in VIIRS night-lights imagery, plus extras like surface height, sun and moon angles, satellite angles, and whether each spot is land or water. It's the position information, not the brightness picture itself.
How it's made. Calculated very quickly (near-real-time) for the VIIRS day/night band on the Suomi-NPP satellite, using the spacecraft's position and pointing data combined with a terrain model.
How & where you'd use it. A behind-the-scenes input that other VIIRS night-lights products depend on to pin each measurement to the right place on the map; not something used directly by most people.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2021-11-01 → ongoing
- Measured bySuomi-NPP (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/NPP Day/Night Band Moderate Resolution Terrain-Corrected Geolocation 6-Min L1 Swath 750m Near Real Time (NRT) product, short-name VNP03DNB_NRT includes the geolocation fields that are calculated for VIIRS day-night band (DNB) Line of sight (LOS) for all orbits at the nominal resolution of 750 m. The locations and ancillary information correspond to the intersection of the centers of each Field of View (FOV) from 16 detectors in the DNB on the Earth's surface. A digital terrain model is used to model the Earth's surface. The main inputs are the spacecraft attitude and orbit ephemeris data, the instrument telemetry and the digital elevation model. The geolocation fields contained within the VNP03DNB Geolocation files include geodetic latitude, longitude, surface height above the geoid, solar and lunar zenith and azimuth angles, lunar phase angle and illumination fraction, satellite zenith and azimuth angles, and a land/water mask for each 750m sample. Additional information is included in the header to enable the calculation of the approximate location of the center of the detectors for any of the VIIRS bands. This product is used as input by subsequent VIIRS day/night band products, particularly those produced by the Land team.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="VNP03DNB_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.