What is the MODIS file naming convention and what does the file name tell me?
MODIS Aerosol HDF file names have this naming convention:
Terra file: MOD04_L2.AYYYYDDD.HHMM.CCC.YEARDAYHRMNSC.hdf
Aqua file: MYD04_L2.AYYYYDDD.HHMM.CCC.YEARDAYHRMNSC.hdf
YYYY, DDD and HHMM are four digit year, three digit Julian day, and time of day in UTC, CCC is the collection (005 for Collection 5, 051 for Collection 5.1 and 006 for Collection 6), and YEARDAYHRMNSC represents when the file was processed.
The MOD04 and MYD04 files include many parameters, each stored as a Scientific Data Set (SDS) within the file.