Choose your date of interest. If this is a MODIS data viewer you may also choose to composite or average multiple days worth of data. If you decide to average the data you can also choose a past, centered or forward looking window.

Choose the region that you would like to see. You may choose specific coordinates or select a predefined region. With the global viewer you may specify the longitude from -180 to 360. This may seem a little strange, but it allows you to see the entire pacific or atlantic without a break. For example, specifying a region from -180 to 180 will give you a global plot centered about the prime meridian, while specifying 0 to 360 will give you a global plot centered about the 180th meridian.

The picture width pull down menu sets the width of the picture in centimeters. Note that if you choose PostScript as the output format you will not be able to control the picture width.

The grid lines option allows you to include grid lines on the plot. The spacing interval is defined by the pull down menu. Choose zero for no grid lines

Choose the minimum and maximum data range for the plot. Any value above or below is set to the min/max.

If this is a MODIS data viewer you may also choose between the Aqua and Terra platforms. If this is a global MODIS viewer you can choose between 4km and 9km resolution (the Gulf of Mexico viewer is set to 4km).

Choose the output image format (PNG or PostScript). If you choose to plot a PostScript the picture width will be selected for you. The PostScript may have some uneccessary white space depending on what region you choose, and we will leave it up to you to trim the image. If you need a free PostScript editing program try Inkscape. Note that the PostScripts are generated with 600 dpi, which should be enough for most publications.