Pixel location helper file, near-real-time (VIIRS Suomi-NPP, 375 m)
What it measures. Precise location information for each pixel seen by the VIIRS imager, including latitude, longitude, surface height, the angles of the Sun and satellite, and a land-versus-water flag, at 375-meter resolution.
How it's made. Calculated for the VIIRS instrument on the Suomi-NPP satellite using spacecraft position and pointing data plus a terrain model, and delivered in near-real-time.
How & where you'd use it. A behind-the-scenes building-block file: it tells other products exactly where each measurement falls on Earth. Most people use it indirectly through the many VIIRS imagery products built on top of it.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2021-12-15 → ongoing
- Measured bySuomi-NPP (VIIRS)
- Processing levelLevel 1B
- 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
The VIIRS/NPP Imagery Resolution Terrain-Corrected Geolocation 6-Min L1 Swath 375m Near Real Time (NRT) product, short-name VNP03IMG includes the geolocation fields that are calculated for each VIIRS imagery resolution band (I-band) Line of sight (LOS) for all orbits at the nominal resolution of 375 m. The locations and ancillary information correspond to the intersection of the centers of each Field of View (FOV) from 32 detectors in an ideal I-band 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 VNP03IMG Geolocation files include geodetic latitude, longitude, surface height above the geoid, solar zenith and azimuth angles, satellite zenith and azimuth angles, and a land/water mask for each 375m 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 a large number of subsequent VIIRS Imagery Resolution 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="VNP03IMG_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.