VIIRS Day/Night Band Geolocation Swath Data

Geolocation data for the VIIRS Day/Night Band sensor on the Suomi NPP satellite, providing terrain-corrected coordinates for each pixel at a 750-meter resolution. The dataset includes geodetic latitude, longitude, surface height, solar and lunar angles, sensor angles, a land/water mask, moon illumination data, and quality flags. It is produced by NASA's LAADS organization and is available from multiple platforms.

Use Cases

• Precise georeferencing of VIIRS Day/Night Band imagery using latitude and longitude columns.
• Analyzing solar and lunar illumination conditions for night light studies via solar zenith/azimuth and lunar zenith/azimuth angles.
• Applying terrain corrections to radiance data using the surface height above the geoid parameter.
• Masking land versus water pixels in analysis using the integrated land/water mask.
• Filtering data quality for downstream applications using the provided quality flag.

Strengths

• Provides high-resolution (750m) geolocation for the VIIRS Day/Night Band sensor.
• Includes terrain correction using a digital terrain model, improving positional accuracy.
• Contains multiple ancillary parameters like solar/lunar angles and a land/water mask.

Limitations

• Specific row count, file size, and temporal coverage are not provided by any source.
• The license is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' without further detail.

Provenance

Source

NASA LAADS

Collection Method

Generated from SNPP platform ephemeris, attitude data, and VIIRS sensor geometry using a geolocation algorithm.

Freshness

2026-03-12 20:16:27.811392

Geography

Global