VNP02DNB_NRT: VIIRS Day/Night Band Satellite Imagery

NASA's Suomi NPP satellite collects this Level 1B swath product every six minutes. The Day/Night Band sensor captures panchromatic data from 500-900 nm, enabling observation from daylight down to low-light nighttime radiation. Its on-board calibration and stray-light corrections provide radiometrically calibrated data at approximately 750-meter spatial resolution at nadir.

Use Cases

• Monitoring urban light emissions and energy use based on calibrated nighttime radiance.
• Detecting and tracking nocturnal fishing activity from boat lights over oceans.
• Analyzing the extent and recovery of power grids after disasters using nighttime light signals.
• Studying atmospheric phenomena like auroras or airglow visible in low-light conditions.
• Calibrating and validating models of lunar and solar reflectance for nighttime remote sensing.

Strengths

• Provides continuous on-board radiometric calibration, a first-of-its-kind methodology for on-orbit data.
• Offers near-real-time (NRT) data delivery, suitable for time-sensitive monitoring applications.
• Sensor is sensitive across a wide radiance range, from bright daylight to very low-light nighttime conditions.

Limitations

• Specific column names and data structure are not provided in the available metadata.
• License is listed as 'other-license-specified' without explicit terms, requiring further investigation for use.
• Metadata on data volume (size, row count) is unavailable across all sources.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), VIIRS Characterization Support Team.

Collection Method

Processed from 6-minute data swaths acquired by the VIIRS instrument on the Suomi NPP satellite.

Freshness

Last updated: 2026-04-09 (as per datagov).

Geography

Global coverage from satellite swaths.