File: AAREADME.TXT                                 Version: 3/16/2001 JFC
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Zodiacal Light Photometer Background Sky Data on Magnetic Tape

NSSDC ID: 72-012A-14A
Mission Name: Pioneer 10
Experiment Name: Zodiacal-Light Two-Color Photopolarimetry

Time Span: 1972-05-17 to 1973-10-06 (as determined by NSSDC) 

Description

This restored data set contains reduced data of photopolarimetric 
measurements of the brightness of the sky. A user's guide explains the 
data parameters and format. The first file consists of a directory 
containing two records of tape identification information. There are a 
variable number of data files, each beginning with a header record 
containing day of year, input tape number, section number (each day's 
observations of the sky may be broken into as many as eight sections 
delineated by look angle), start and stop times of observations, 
ephemeris information, number of stars used to get pointing correction, 
standard deviation, number of look angles, and look angles included in 
the section. The data records contain right ascension and declination of 
center of field of view, elongation angle of sun, blue and red brightness
in Experimenter Data Records (EDR) units, declination and right ascension
of star, dwell time, and vignetting correction. 

Related Information and Data:

Further details on the spacecraft, experiment, data sets at NSSDC, and 
related WWW sites can be found on the Pioneer 10/11 flight project page 
under

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/space/

Acknowledgement:

Use of these data in publications should be accompanied at minimum by
acknowledgements of the National Space Science Data Center and the 
responsible Principal Investigator defined in the experiment documentation 
provided here.