Learn to Use Earth Data
About
Full catalog/VJ102MOD
VJ102MOD·v2.1·dataset

Raw calibrated satellite images, from NASA's VIIRS sensor on NOAA-20 (750 m detail)

VIIRS/JPSS1 Moderate Resolution 6-Min L1B Swath 750 m
land NASA LAADS Level 1B active NetCDF-4
Illustration of what Raw calibrated satellite images, from NASA's VIIRS sensor on NOAA-20 (750 m detail) shows
Illustration of the concept — not real satellite data.
In plain English

What it measures. Calibrated readings of how much light and heat energy the sensor recorded across 16 wavelength bands, from visible through infrared, at 750-meter detail, together with quality flags and location info.

How it's made. Produced from the VIIRS instrument on the NOAA-20 satellite by taking its raw measurements and converting them into calibrated, geolocated radiance and reflectance values.

How & where you'd use it. A foundational building-block product that most people use indirectly, through the higher-level products (like vegetation or temperature maps) that are built from it.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › INFRARED RADIANCESPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › REFLECTED INFRAREDSPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › VISIBLE WAVELENGTHS › VISIBLE RADIANCE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2018-01-05 → ongoing
  • Measured byNOAA-20 (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/JPSS1 Moderate Resolution 6-Min L1B Swath 750 m, short-name VJ102MOD is VIIRS Level-1B 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. In contrast to a MODIS L1B product, which temporally spans 5 minutes, the VIIRS L1B calibrated radiances product contains a nominal temporal duration of 6 minutes.

Get the data

vj102mod_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="VJ102MOD",
    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.