NASA's MODIS/Terra instrument provides raw radiance counts for all 36 spectral bands at 250 m, 500 m, or 1 km resolutions. The Level-1A Near Real Time product packages raw instrument data with engineering and spacecraft ancillary information into granules. Data is produced by the LANCEMODIS organization.
Use Cases
- Calibrate thermal infrared (TIR) band radiances using black body view data and engineering telemetry.
- Identify missing or bad pixels across spectral bands using the embedded quality indicators.
- Analyze diurnal cycles by comparing daytime visible/SWIR/NIR measurements with night-mode TIR data from bands 20-36.
- Perform geolocation processing using the provided time tags and spacecraft ancillary data for each granule.
Strengths
- Contains raw data for all 36 MODIS spectral bands.
- Includes multiple detector views: Earth, solar diffuser, SRCA, black body, and space view.
- Provides data at three spatial resolutions: 250 m, 500 m, and 1 km.
Limitations
- Specific row count, temporal coverage, and geographic extent are unknown.
- Data is raw radiance counts requiring significant calibration and processing for scientific use.
- Visible, SWIR, and NIR measurements are unavailable for night portions of the orbit.
Provenance
- Source
- NASA Earthdata via LANCEMODIS organization.
- Collection Method
- Raw instrument data from the MODIS/Terra satellite, reformatted and packaged with engineering and ancillary data.
- Time Range
- null
- Freshness
- Near Real Time (NRT) product.
- Geography
- Global coverage from the Terra satellite's swath.