# General information

AccuWeather's Global Satellite API delivers worldwide **satellite overlay tiles** and **static satellite map images** — past and current cloud and atmospheric imagery rendered as PNG tiles for layering onto an existing map, plus complete static images with legends ready for embedding.

→ See the [Satellite Guide](/developers/maps/satellite-guide) and [Parameters](/developers/maps/satellite-parameters) for endpoint details and request patterns.

## What you can request

- **Overlay tiles** — square PNG tiles designed to layer onto a Mercator-projection map service (Google Maps, Mapbox, Leaflet, Bing Maps). Tiles are returned one at a time.
- **Static maps** — complete weather map images (PNG or JPG) with built-in color legends. Available in **light or dark mode**, perfect for thumbnails, social cards, or fixed-size dashboards.

:::note
The Global Satellite API does **not** provide base map imagery. Overlay tiles are designed to display on top of a map service of your choice.
:::

## Products

Different regions of the world use different satellites with different update intervals. Without coordination, that inconsistency would cause some regions to appear to "jump" while others move smoothly on a zoomed-out view.

To prevent that, Global Satellite groups regional data sources into **products**. When a viewport spans multiple regions, Global Satellite identifies the slowest-refreshing product and matches the others to its rate — producing a cohesive, gracefully-synchronized view of world weather.

Each product has a unique code in the form `major-minor` (two numbers separated by a dash). Both values are returned in any API response that identifies one or more products.

## Frames

Some endpoints return a list of **frames** — each frame has a timestamp and defines one set of satellite tiles. The total time span varies by product. When a viewport spans multiple products, Global Satellite trims to the shortest time span, so all visible regions cover matching periods.

## Normalized radar data

Global Satellite supports **Normalized Radar Data (NRD)** — a special mode that encodes precise temperature information into the red channel of the satellite imagery. When NRD is enabled, the red value of every pixel directly correlates to a temperature in **Kelvin**, enabling pixel-accurate temperature analysis.

| Red value | Kelvin (K) |
| --- | --- |
| 0 | No data |
| 1 | 180 |
| 254 | 308 |

Each increase of 1 in the red value corresponds to an increase of **0.5059 K**. Convert any red value `R` to Kelvin using:

```
K = 180 + 0.5059 × (R - 1)
```