Intercomparison of the SNPP and NOAA-20 VIIRS DNB High-Gain Stage Using Observations of Bright Stars

Abstract

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on board the Suomi-NPP (SNPP) and NOAA-20 (N20) spacecrafts is a multispectral Earth-observing instrument with bands covering wavelengths from visible to long-wave infrared. Among these bands is a panchromatic day/night band (DNB) with a broad spectral response ranging from 500 to 900 nm, and a high dynamic range spanning over seven orders of magnitude, allowing for observations to take place during both daytime and nighttime. The DNB operates at three gain levels, with low- and mid-gain stages and two high-gain stages (HGSs). The HGS is capable of detecting dim city lights during Earth-view observations at night as well as bright stars through the instrument space-view port. Since SNPP and N20 are at opposite points of the same orbit, each VIIRS instrument is able to observe the same stars with the DNB in successive orbits. This will allow us to make a direct comparison of the relative calibration of each instrument using stars over a range of spectral classes. In this article, we develop methodology for accurately identifying target stars in order to make proper comparisons between the DNB HGS of each instrument. We then take observations from multiple stars in order to compute the ratio in the measured irradiance for each instrument as a function of spectral class. For K-type stars, which have the least spectral change over the DNB wavelength range, we measure a calibration bias between the SNPP and N20 DNB HGS of approximately 4%, which is stable over the duration of the N20 mission.