Metis publication policy


The Metis data produced during the Nominal Mission Phase (NMP) are made available freely and without restrictions to all parties and for all purposes after three months from the science telemetry download. Data acquired during the Commissioning and Cruise Phase (CP) are available upon request. This is fully consistent with ESA’s open data policy.

As part of the development of collaboration with the broader solar and heliophysics community, however, Metis mission has defined some rules to govern how Metis instrument data should be used. They are briefly described below and are detailed in the User Guide for Solar Orbiter/Metis Data Products and Publication Policy document to which this text refers to.

These rules will apply starting from the beginning of the Nominal Mission Phase (NMP). Data from Commissioning and Cruise are available upon request.


Public Metis data from the Solar Orbiter Archive (SOAR)

Three months after the NMP data are downlinked to the ground and processed they are released to the public and are available through the Solar Orbiter Archive (SOAR) and can be freely used.

The PI recommends that scientists adhere to the following guidelines:

  1. All publications using Metis data should:
  2. In case of any doubt about the instrument, users are encouraged to consult with the PI to discuss the appropriate use of instrument data or model. Metis team should facilitate this process, serving as the contact point between PI and users in most cases.
  3. Low latency data are not intended for quantitative analysis and therefore they should not be used for scientific purposes.


Restricted use of Metis data

The Metis Team has the privilege to use Metis data from Cruise Phase (CP) and from the Nominal Mission Phase (NMP) before they become publicly available in the Solar Orbiter Archive (SOAR), but everyone is invited and welcome to collaborate with the team.

What type of data and when they are available can be found in the Observation summary section.


Acknowledgments

Please use the following acknowledgments for any paper that contains Metis data:

Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA, operated by ESA. Metis was built and operated with funding from the Italian Space Agency (ASI), under contracts to the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) and industrial partners. Metis was built with hardware contributions from Germany (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie through DLR), from the Czech Republic (PRODEX) and from ESA.