Granule

A single data file (or smallest distributable unit) within a collection — one scene, one orbit, one day’s tile.

Why it matters

When you search CMR, you find collections; when you download, you get granules. Knowing the difference saves you from accidentally requesting a million files.

Where you’ll meet it

• earthaccess.search_data(...) returns a list of granules; each result is one file you can then download or stream.
• A single MOD13Q1 granule is one 16-day NDVI tile for one ~10°×10° region — you stitch many granules to cover a country or a year.
• CMR (the Common Metadata Repository) indexes both levels: you discover a collection by its short-name/version, then drill into its granules by date and bounding box.

In plain terms

A collection is a TV series; a granule is one episode.