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Modis Technical Guide: 1. Orbit and Acquisition Characteristics

This technical guide provides details on using MODIS imagery downloaded from the GLCF. It describes the MODIS sensor onboard the Terra and Aqua satellites, which combine characteristics of AVHRR and Landsat sensors. The guide includes information on the Terra satellite's orbit and acquisition characteristics, the radiometric characteristics and data format of MODIS imagery, including its 32-day composites in 7 bands and 294 tile grid.

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60 views2 pages

Modis Technical Guide: 1. Orbit and Acquisition Characteristics

This technical guide provides details on using MODIS imagery downloaded from the GLCF. It describes the MODIS sensor onboard the Terra and Aqua satellites, which combine characteristics of AVHRR and Landsat sensors. The guide includes information on the Terra satellite's orbit and acquisition characteristics, the radiometric characteristics and data format of MODIS imagery, including its 32-day composites in 7 bands and 294 tile grid.

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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Modis Technical Guide

This guide provides users the details they need to employ imagery downloaded from the
GLCF. This is not intended as a seminal instruction on this topic, but rather a first step
toward practical utilization.

MODIS is an important sensor onboard NASA's Terra (EOS AM) and Aqua (EOS PM)
satellites. The land imaging component of the MODIS sensor combines characteristics of
AVHRR and Landsat sensors to provide improved monitoring of the Earth's surface at
global scales. It is important to note that while the MODIS sensor is onboard both the
Terra and Aqua satellites, MODIS data available at GLCF are exclusively derived from
the sensor on the Terra platform. Please visit one of the MODIS web pages at left for
more information.

1. Orbit and Acquisition Characteristics


The Terra satellite began collecting data of the Earth's surface in February of 2000. It is a
polar orbiting spacecraft that obtains complete Earth coverage every one to two days and
is designed to cross the equator at a time when cloud cover is at its daily minimum
(10:30AM, descending). The following table describes the orbit and acquisition
characteristics of the MODIS sensor onboard the Terra satellite.

Swath (km) Scene Size (km) Altitude (km) Revisit (days)


2330km ~10 x ~10 705km 16

2. Radiometric Characteristics Unlike other satellite imagery and products, MODIS


data is systematically converted into derived atmospheric, oceanic, and terrestrial
products. The MODIS surface reflectance product is part of the latter. All seven land
bands are corrected for atmospheric effects with an algorithm that uses aerosol and water
vapor information collected by the sensor. The algorithm corrects for thin cirrus clouds,
aerosols, and atmospheric gasses. The result is an estimation of surface reflectance as if it
had been measured on the surface, without the effects of atmospheric absorption or
scattering. The table below describes wavelengths represented by the 7 bands included
here:

Band Wavelength (nm) Description


1 620-670 Red
2 841-876 Near-infrared
3 459-479 Blue
4 545-565 Green
5 1230-1250 Short wave infrared
6 1628-1652 Short wave infrared (similar to Landsat band 5)
7 2105-2155 Short wave infrared (similar to Landsat band 7)
3. Data Format Properties
This material concerns the 32-day composites, from Collection 3.The 500m 32-day
composites available from the GLCF were derived from the MODIS level 3 surface
reflectance product called MOD09A1 (8-day Surface Reflectance Composites). These
monthly composites were a necessary precursor to the MODIS Vegetation Continuous
Fields product. See the table below for the days included in the monthly composites:

Julian Days Calendar Days


361-032 Dec 27 - Feb.1
033-064 Feb.2-Mar.5
065-096 Mar.6-Apr.6
097-128 Apr.7-May 8
129-160 May 9-Jun.9
161-192 Jun.10-Jul.11
193-224 Jul.12-Aug.12
225-256 Aug.13-Sep.13
257-288 Sep.14-Oct.15
289-330 Oct.16-Nov.16
321-360 Nov.17-Dec.26

Note that 365 (days in the year) is not evenly divisible by 32 (days in our compositing
period). This is why the December and January composites have 40 and 37 days in their
compositing period (Julian days 321-360 and 361-032).
The 8-day composites are received in 294 individual tiles that make up the land surface
area of the earth (excludes any unnecessary ocean data or otherwise non-land containing
areas). Our 32-day composites are done in these same 294 tiles then stitched together and
reprojected using Nearest Neighbor resampling into the Goode's Homolosine projection
with continental subsets. The data cannot easily be stitched into a single global file
because the resultant file would be approximately 7GB in size per band. This would be
cumbersome to download and is relatively unsupported in most file systems. All files are
available in GeoTIFF format.

UMD GLCF; December 2006

UMD Geography; 2006

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