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When working with our Archives APIs, you’ll encounter concepts defined by the SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) specification. This section gives you a brief introduction to these key concepts.

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What is STAC?

STAC is an open standard for describing geospatial data. It provides a structured way to catalog, index, and search for satellite imagery and other geospatial assets.

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Collections

A Collection in STAC represents a group of related imagery items. It serves as a container for items that share similar characteristics, such as the same sensor type or geographic region.
  • Key Points:
    • Contains metadata about the dataset.
    • Includes links to the collection’s details and related resources.
  • For More Details:
Once you understand the concept of a Collection, you might want to see what collections are available on our platform. For example, one of our collections is called pixxel-td-l2a.

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Try It Out Yourself

To get started, you can list all available collections using our API. This will help you identify collections like pixxel-td-l2a that you might want to explore further. 
curl -X GET "https://api.pixxel.space/v0/archives/collections" \
  -H "Authorization: <YOUR_API_KEY>"

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STAC Items

A STAC Item represents a single satellite image and its metadata. Each item typically includes:
  • Geometry: The spatial footprint of the image in GeoJSON format.
  • Properties: Metadata such as capture date, cloud cover, and sensor details.
  • Assets: A set of links to different representations or versions of the image (e.g., thumbnails, full-resolution images).
  • Key Points:
    • The schema for STAC Items is designed to be both extensible and consistent.
    • Assets provide access to the actual imagery data.
  • For More Details:

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Try It Out Yourself

Once you’ve explored a collection, the next step is to look at the individual items within it. Let’s use the collection pixxel-td-l2a as an example, an item endpoint provides you with all the metadata and asset links needed to make informed decisions about the imagery. 
curl -X GET "https://api.pixxel.space/v0/archives/collections/pixxel-td-l2a/items" \
  -H "Authorization: <YOUR_API_KEY>"
This brief overview should help you understand the basics of STAC, Collections, and STAC Items as they relate to our Archives APIs. For more detailed information, refer to the links above.
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