Nighttime Lights of North and Central America

This Black Marble Gap-Filled Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) Corrected Nighttime Lights (Day/Night Band) image is from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) aboard the joint NASA/NOAA Suomi NPP platform. It is a daily, moonlight- and atmosphere-corrected nighttime lights near real-time (NRT) layer from the VNP46A2 product that has been newly released into NASA Worldview. 

Currently the imagery will appear from July 21 onwards, but may be backfilled in the future. Move around the map to explore how the daily nighttime lights around the world highlight inhabited areas like cities and towns, and the highways that connect them.

The comparison above shows the Black Marble Nighttime At Sensor Radiance (Day/Night Band) layer on the left "A" side and the Black Marble Gap-Filled BRDF Corrected Nighttime Lights (Day/Night Band) layer on the right "B" side. The At Sensor Radiance layer shows at-sensor top-of-atmosphere nighttime radiance while the Nighttime Lights layer corrects for the presence of moonlight and atmosphere. For example, the aurora borealis (Northern Lights) are visible in the left image in Canada, while it has been corrected for in the right image.

Other areas in the left image may have some cloud partially obscuring the nighttime lights, but it is corrected for in the right image. This is achieved by using multiple product inputs including NASA’s Black Marble daily at-sensor top-of-atmosphere nighttime radiance product (VNP46A1), daily DNB BRDF/Albedo Model Parameters (VNP43LGDNBA1), daily surface reflectance (VNPPLG09GA), and daily Aerosol Optical Thickness (VNP04LGA).

Visit Worldview to visualize near real-time imagery and historical imagery from NASA's ESDIS; find more imagery in our Worldview weekly image archive.