Fig. 1

Schematic diagram of the science data-processing pipeline developed for Akatsuki. Science data telemetry packets are stored into the SIRIUS database in ISAS. Level 0 data is a binary image data that is constructed from the compressed and fragmented packet data. Level 1a data is produced in the FITS format by combining the Level 0 image data and the ancillary data, which are stored in the header of the HDU of the FITS file. Level 1b data is produced from Level 1a with geometry information created by processing navigation data using SPICE kernels, which are provided as two separated FITS files. The orientation of the image is also adjusted in this process. Level 2b data are produced from the Level 1b data, whose image count values are converted into physical quantities (radiance for UVI, IR1, IR2, and brightness temperature for LIR). Level 3 data are global-grid data in the NetCDF format on the regular longitude–latitude map produced from the Level 2b data by correcting the pointing errors of the camera using the limb-fitting technique. The Levels 1b, L2b, and L3 data with the SPICE kernels will be open to the public at the Akatsuki Science Data Archives (http://darts.isas.jaxa.jp/planet/project/akatsuki/)