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Full catalog/WV03_Pan_L2A
WV03_Pan_L2A·v1·dataset

Sharp black-and-white satellite photos (WorldView-3)

WorldView-3 Level 2A Panchromatic Satellite Imagery
land NASA CSDA Level 2 NTFNITF21NCDRDGeoTIFF
In plain English

What it measures. Very sharp black-and-white satellite photos of the land surface, with detail down to about 0.31 meters at best, geographically corrected and map-projected.

How it's made. Captured by the high-resolution camera on the commercial WorldView-3 satellite, then processed with radiometric and sensor corrections and projected onto a map using a coarse elevation model.

How & where you'd use it. Suited to applications needing very high-resolution imagery, though access is restricted under a government license and requires approval.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › VISIBLE WAVELENGTHS › VISIBLE RADIANCESPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › REFLECTED INFRAREDSPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › INFRARED RADIANCESPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › VISIBLE WAVELENGTHS › VISIBLE IMAGERYLAND SURFACE › SURFACE RADIATIVE PROPERTIES › REFLECTANCESPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › INFRARED IMAGERY

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2014-08-13 → ongoing
  • Measured byWORLDVIEW-3 (WV110)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsNTFNITF21NCDRD, GeoTIFF
  • 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 WorldView-3 Level 2A Panchromatic Imagery collection contains satellite imagery acquired from Vantor, Inc. (formerly known as Maxar Technologies) by the Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program. Imagery is collected by the WorldView-3 satellite using the WorldView-110 camera across the global land surface from August 2014 to the present. This imagery has a spatial resolution of 0.31m at nadir and a temporal resolution of less than one day. The data are provided in National Imagery Transmission Format (NITF) and GeoTIFF formats. These level 2A data have been processed and undergone radiometric correction, sensor correction, projected to a plane using a map projection and datum, and has a coarse DEM applied. The data potentially serve a wide variety of applications that require high resolution imagery. Data access is restricted based on a National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) license, and investigators must be approved by the CSDA Program.

Get the data

wv03_pan_l2a_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="WV03_Pan_L2A",
    version="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 CSDA
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.