EO·Atlas
Nightlights radiometry
Measures calibrated night-time visible to near-infrared radiance from low-light imagers, supporting economic activity, electrification, outage, urbanisation, and light-pollution analyses.
Nightlights radiometry measures night-time upward radiance from artificial and natural light sources using low-light visible/NIR imaging. VIIRS Day-Night Band products improved calibration and spatial resolution over DMSP-OLS, while Black Marble adds corrections for lunar illumination, atmosphere, clouds, snow, and other confounders.[1][2] It is a strong proxy for economic activity and infrastructure state, but it misses unlit activity and can be biased by lighting technology, saturation, fires, aurora, moonlight residuals, and viewing geometry.
- Operational Linescan System
via DMSP-F18
OLS low-light visible observations on DMSP-F18 support nightlights radiometry; WMO/NOAA identify OLS as active on F18.
- CS-292 Suupistri-EO
CS-292 Suupistri-EO high-resolution visible camera with GSD <1m; capable of nighttime light imaging
Derives vegetation health, density, and phenology indicators (NDVI, EVI, SAVI) from red and NIR band ratios; good for crop monitoring, deforestation alerts, and land cover change detection.
Retrieves chlorophyll-a concentration, CDOM, and suspended sediment from spectrally resolved water-leaving radiance; good for marine primary production, harmful algal bloom detection, and coastal water quality.
Images the sea surface in sun-glint geometry, where surface-slope modulation of reflected sunlight reveals wave patterns and roughness; supports wave-spectrum and roughness estimation under clear-sky, suitable-illumination conditions. A complementary optical method, not an all-weather baseline.
Passive imaging of reflected sunlight in a small number of discrete spectral bands, including single-band panchromatic, from push-broom, whiskbroom and framing cameras. The base optical imaging method behind land, coastal and atmospheric imagery, from very-high-resolution commercial constellations to moderate-resolution weather and land imagers. Band set, ground sampling distance, tasking, orbit and revisit are attributes of an implementation, not separate methods.
- [1]Nighttime Lightsagency doc2026-06-08
- [2]NASA VIIRS Land Products: Black Marbleagency doc2026-06-08
Edited from public sources by SpectraWorks editorial. See the data dictionary for field definitions.
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Plain text
Nightlights radiometry. EO-Atlas, SpectraWorks B.V. https://eo-atlas.org/topics/methodologies/nightlights-radiometry (CC BY 4.0)
BibTeX
@misc{eoatlas:topics:methodologies:nightlights-radiometry,
title = {Nightlights radiometry},
author = {{EO-Atlas}},
publisher = {SpectraWorks B.V.},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
url = {https://eo-atlas.org/topics/methodologies/nightlights-radiometry}
}