AKATSUKI Lightning and Airglow Camera (LAC) Data Archive
The science data obtained by Lightning and Airglow Camera (LAC)
onboard the AKATSUKI (also known as Venus Climate Orbiter and PLANET-C) spacecraft
are provided on this page.
Instrument Overview
LAC searches for lightning flashes and maps airglow emissions on the nightside disk of Venus.
Data Download, metadata, citation information
VCO Akatsuki LAC bundle (urn:jaxa:darts:vco_lac) (pre-peer-review version, in preparation)
Definition of Product Level
Level 1 (l1)
raw data (count value in ASCII table)
File Naming Convention
Filename is in "CAM_DATE_TIME_KIND_SEQ_LEVEL_VER.EXT" format.
CAM
Name of the camera: lac for LAC.
DATE
date in UTC when image taken at in "YYYYMMDD" format, where YYYY is four-digit year (2010 -- 20??), MM is two-digit month (01 -- 12), and DD is two-digit day (01 -- 31): e.g., 20151211 for 2015-12-11.
TIME
time in UTC when image taken at in "hhmmss" format, where hh is two-digit hour (00 -- 23), mm is two-digit minutes (00 -- 59), and ss is two-digit seconds (00 -- 60): e.g., 123704 for 12:37:04.
KIND
kind of image type: lig for image taken with lightning observation mode, and atm for image taken with airglow observation mode.
SEQ
sequence number of the day in four digit, started from 0001: e.g., 0002 for 2nd data.
LEVEL
level of product: l1.
VER
version string: v10 for "version 1.0".
EXT
extension that represents file type: tab for table-type format text file, jpg for JPEG file, png for PNG file, and lbl for PDS3 label file.
When you publish your own work based on the AKATSUKI LAC data, please refer to the following paper(s):
Takahashi, Y., J. Yoshida, Y. Yair, T. Imamura, M. Nakamura,
Lightning detection by LAC onboard the Japanese Venus climate orbiter, Planet-C,
Space Sci. Rev., 137, 317-334,
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-008-9400-x, 2008.
Takahashi, Y., M. Sato, M. Imai, R. Lorenz, Y. Yair, K. Aplin, G. Fischer,
M. Nakamura, N. Ishii, T. Abe, T. Satoh, T. Imamura, C. Hirose, M. Suzuki,
G. L. Hashimoto, N. Hirata, A. Yamazaki, T. M. Sato, M. Yamada, S. Murakami,
Y. Yamamoto, T. Fukuhara, K. Ogohara, H. Ando, K. Sugiyama, H. Kashimura,
S. Ohtsuki,
Initiation of a lightning search using the lightning and airglow camera
onboard the Venus orbiter Akatsuki,
Earth, Planets and Space, 70, 88,
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40623-018-0836-2, 2018. (Open Access)
Murakami, S., M. Imai, M. Sato, Y. Takahashi, Y. Yamamoto,
G. L. Hashimoto, VENUS CLIMATE ORBITER LAC RAW DATA V1.0,
VCO-V-LAC-2-EDR-V1.0, NASA Planetary Data System, 2021.