NASA Black Marble VNP46 Nighttime Lights

NASA Black Marble is a suite of nighttime lights products derived from the VIIRS Day/Night Band (DNB) aboard Suomi-NPP (from 2012) and NOAA-20 (from 2018). The suite comprises four product granules: VNP46A1 (daily at-sensor top-of-atmosphere radiance), VNP46A2 (daily gap-filled surface radiance), VNP46A3 (monthly composites), and VNP46A4 (annual composites).^[1][2] Products are delivered on a 500 m (15 arc-second) HDF-EOS5 tile grid.^[3] The underlying DNB pixel geometry is 750 m; the VIIRS Land Team documents cite 500 m in reference to the tile grid while NASA Earthdata project pages reference the 750 m DNB pixel.^[1][4] Black Marble applies atmospheric correction, bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) normalisation, and cloud masking to isolate surface-emitted light from lunar illumination and atmospheric contributions.^[2] Products are distributed open-access via NASA LAADS DAAC. A NOAA-21 (VJ246) product was listed as in development as of mid-2026.^[4]