A preliminary investigation of Luojia-1 night-time light imagery

Launched on 2 June 2018, Luojia-1 satellite records night-time light imagery at 130 m resolution, which is higher than most of the existing night-time light images to date. This study evaluated radiometric and spatial properties of the Luojia-1 satellite imagery for cities of Los Angeles, Wuhan and Rome as well as the change detection capability for Zunyi city. For the radiometric property, the analysis shows that the Luojia-1 images correlate well with the radiance of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS)’s Day and Night Band (DNB), and that the Luojia-1 images have a wider range of radiance values, as well as higher radiance values (e.g., 40%–90% higher) than the VIIRS DNB images. Using wavelet decomposition and change detection analysis to evaluate spatial property and change detection capability, it was found that the Luojia-1 images provide abundant spatial detail information, with about 20%–54% energy of wavelet component of the images stored in 100–400 m resolutions, and they can help to track the electrification of new roads and buildings at a fine resolution. This study shows that the Luojia-1 images are an effective data source for analysing spatiotemporal distribution of night-time light and its associated socioeconomic attributes.