Data Quality and Caveats

Issues fixed in Data Release 02

2013-12-03

The most significant change in this data release is that Level 3 (pitch angle resolved)
files are now available for all ECT instruments.

Level 2 files have also been reprocessed and have been released with the "rel02" label.
Any routines that read the previous "rel01" files should be changed to read "rel02"
and we recommend that only release 02 data be used now.

Significant, known data issues remain in release 02 and are documented at
science/DataQualityCaveats.php
Please contact the instrument teams for more information regarding
proper analysis and interpretation of the data.

REPT
----
There was a problem with the timing on sector 0 that was in
the Level 2 files but wasn't an issue in L2 analysis. When sector was turned
into pitch angle the sector0 problem showed up as a pitch angle problem.
This has been fixed. Release02 data will improve over the initial release.

MagEIS
------
MagEIS Level 3 files are now available on line. In addition to sorting by
pitch angle the MagEIS L3 files also applies a routine to to mask sectors that
saw either the sun or the sunlit Earth and combine the data from the
different MagEIS instruments into a single L3 data product. the outcome is a single
common data set of pitch angles that the community can all use without
significant overhead of reprocessing by each investigator.

HOPE
----
While validating the HOPE moments we found a serious problem that affects
all the pitch angles and pitch angle-derived products, rendering them essentially unusable
scientifically. The issue was a subtle incompatibility in the APL SPICE and LANL
Space Py libraries that applied incorrect rotation matrices. The resulting errors
could be large and could result in unphysically isotropic distribution functions.
HOPE Level 3 codes have been completely rewritten and the data for the full
mission have been processed.