Try it in a notebook
Run a complete Python example in Google Colab or Jupyter, from federated search to a footprint map and GeoJSON export.
Explore SuperSTAC with a runnable notebook that searches Earth Search and Microsoft Planetary Computer for Sentinel-2 imagery. It uses a standard Python CPU runtime; no GPU or API key is needed for the public metadata searches.
Open the notebook
Download the Python quickstart notebook, then open Google Colab and choose File → Upload notebook. You can also open the downloaded file in Jupyter.
Open directly in Colab · View on GitHub
The GitHub and direct Colab links require the notebook to be published on the repository's main branch. Downloading and uploading the file works independently of that publication step.
What you will do
- Install SuperSTAC, Pandas, and Folium in the notebook kernel.
- Register two catalogs and discover which advertise the requested collection.
- Search an area and date range through one Python client.
- Inspect item details, duplicate counts, and catalog failures.
- Display scene footprints and the search area on a map.
- Export full STAC items, metadata, query settings, and a map to a downloadable ZIP.
Run the cells from top to bottom. The sample searches a fixed month around Luxembourg with at most five items per catalog. Change the bounding box, dates, or catalogs to explore another query. If you raise the item limit, update both the query limit and the configured per-catalog cap.
Understand the output
The map shows scene footprints, not satellite pixels. Item asset links may require provider-specific signing or authentication before downloads. The notebook closes the client in a finally block and continues working with the materialized results.
Results depend on public catalog availability and the installed alpha version. An empty result is not necessarily a successful search: inspect the discovery table, catalogs_queried, and failures. Python exposes item dictionaries and run-level diagnostics, without the Rust per-item provenance wrapper.
Internet access is required for installation, catalog requests, and map tiles. Colab runtime files are temporary, so download the exported ZIP before ending the session. If installation fails because no compatible wheel is available, follow the source installation guide.
Continue with the Python API reference, search parameters, or results and provenance.
