Introduction#

What is PUNCH?#

PUNCH is a NASA Small Explorer (SMEX) mission to better understand how the mass and energy of the Sun’s corona become the solar wind that fills the solar system. Four suitcase-sized satellites will work together to produce images of the entire inner solar system around the clock. You can learn more at the PUNCH website.

Where does punchbowl fit in?#

punchbowl is the data reduction pipeline code for the PUNCH mission. The pipeline, as shown below, consists of several segments of processing.

PUNCH pipeline schematic — This is a schematic of the pipeline.#

These segments are the following:

Raw to Level 0: converts raw satellite data to FITS images
Level 0 to Level 1: basic image calibration
Level 1 to Level 2: polarization resolution, image merging, quality marking
Level 2 to Level 3: background subtraction

We identify these segments by their finishing level, i.e. the Level 1 products come from the Level 0 to Level 1 segment which can be called just the Level 1 segment for short. The processing description and code you’ll find here is organized in this manner.