This page describes the Tanager-1 hyperspectral scenes used in this course, where they come from, and how to access them.
Data Source¶
All scenes used in this course come from Planet’s Open Data STAC — a free, publicly accessible catalog of selected Tanager-1 hyperspectral imagery. No Planet account, API key, or subscription is required to access these scenes.
Catalog URL: planet
See Accessing Tanager-1 Data via the Open Data STAC for a step-by-step walkthrough of browsing and downloading scenes.
What Data Is Available¶
The Open Data STAC organizes Tanager-1 scenes into domains, each reflecting a different application area or science goal:
| Domain | Example Applications |
|---|---|
| Agriculture | Crop stress, vegetation indices, soil characterization |
| Snow & Ice | Snow grain size, melt monitoring |
| Urban | Impervious surface mapping, urban heat island |
| Water Quality | Algal blooms, suspended sediment, coastal monitoring |
| Geology / Mineralogy | Mineral mapping, geologic mapping |
| Emissions | Methane plume detection, CO₂ monitoring |
The same Tanager-1 scene may appear in multiple domains if it is relevant to more than one application area.
Data Format¶
Every Tanager-1 scene in the Open Data STAC is delivered as a package of assets. The main hyperspectral cube is provided in HDF-EOS5 (.h5) format. See the Tanager-1 Assets Ecosystem lesson (Module 2) for a full description of each asset type.
| Asset Type | Format | Description |
|---|---|---|
basic_sr_hdf5 | HDF5 | Hyperspectral cube, surface reflectance, sensor geometry |
basic_radiance_hdf5 | HDF5 | Hyperspectral cube, TOA radiance, sensor geometry |
ortho_sr_hdf5 | HDF5 | Hyperspectral cube, surface reflectance, map-projected |
ortho_radiance_hdf5 | HDF5 | Hyperspectral cube, TOA radiance, map-projected |
ortho_visual | GeoTIFF | RGB quick-look (not for spectral analysis) |
basic_beta_udm | GeoTIFF | Quality mask (clouds, invalid pixels) for Basic scenes |
ortho_beta_udm | GeoTIFF | Quality mask for Ortho scenes |
File Sizes¶
Tanager-1 hyperspectral cubes are large files. Plan accordingly:
| Asset | Approximate Size |
|---|---|
basic_sr_hdf5 (full scene) | 1–2 GB |
ortho_sr_hdf5 (full scene) | 1–2 GB |
ortho_visual (GeoTIFF) | 50–100 MB |
| Quality masks (UDM) | 5–50 MB |
Scenes vary in size depending on scene length (the number of along-track lines collected in a pass).
Running the course in Google Colab is strongly recommended — data is downloaded to the Colab session environment and does not consume local disk space.
Data License¶
Planet’s Open Data is provided under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.
You are free to use, share, and adapt the data for any purpose, including education and research.
Attribution to Planet Labs PBC is required.
For details, see the license terms at the link above.
The course materials (notebooks, markdown, figures) are separately licensed under Apache License 2.0 and can be freely reused with attribution.
How Notebooks Access Data¶
Notebooks in this course download scenes automatically at runtime using direct URLs from the Open Data STAC. You do not need to download or manage files manually. The first code cell in each data-dependent notebook includes a download_data() function that:
Constructs the download URL for the required asset
Streams the file to the working directory
Verifies the download completed successfully
This means you can open any notebook in Colab and run it top-to-bottom without any manual setup.
Checking What Is Available¶
The Open Data STAC catalog evolves over time — new scenes are added and domains may be updated. To see the current available inventory, visit the STAC browser directly.
For a guided walkthrough of the browser interface, see Accessing Tanager-1 Data via the Open Data STAC.