LIGHT POLLUTION

Every Light Has Its Shadow

SATELLITE INSTRUMENT

DMSP-OLS

The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) is a program of the U.S. Department of Defense, run by the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. Having started in 1970, it is dedicated to the monitoring of the meteorological, oceanographic, and solar-terrestrial physics environments. The Operational Linescan System (OLS) acquired global day-night time imagery of the Earth in two spectral band (visible and infrared), twice per day.

TYPE OF INSTRUMENT
Radiometric imaging sensor
STATUS
Decommissioned
DATA AVAILABILITY
Yes, freely available
TIME RANGE
1992 – 2014
FREQUENCY OF MEASUREMENT
Continuous
(12 hours revisit cycle)
DATA PUBLISHING FREQUENCY
n/a
DATA PUBLISHING DELAY
n/a

MORE INFORMATION

CALIBRATED DATA
Partially
MEASUREMENT UNIT
W/cm²/sr
WAVELENGTH RANGE
500 – 900 nm
OBSERVED AREA
from -180° to 180° of long. from -65° to +75° of lat.
FIELD-OF-VIEW
3000 km swath
POINTING DIRECTION
Nadir
SPATIAL RESOLUTION
2.7 km
ORBIT TYPE
Sun-synchronous low alt. polar orbit (830 km alt.)
DATA VISUALISATION
No
DATA DOWNLOAD
NOAA
DATA FORMAT
GeoTIFF, ENVI
DATA POLICY
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
CONTACTS
NOAA

FURTHER REFERENCES

– DMSP program
– DMSP – OLS Nighttime Light Data from EOG / Earth Observation Group (read the article)
– Radiance Calibration on DMSP-OLS Data (read the article)
– Extension of DMSP Nighttime Lights Data beyond 2013 (read the article)
– Cross-calibration between DMSP and VIIRS data (read the article)

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