1.1 Purpose

The CAM Handbook is one in a series of five^1.1 documents that explain the operations of the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) and its four instruments, the data received from the instruments and the processing carried out on the data. Volume I gives an overview of the entire ISO mission and it explains the operations of the ISO satellite while the remaining four explain the individual instruments (CAM, LWS, PHT and SWS). The CAM document is intended to provide all information necessary to understand the offered ISOCAM standard data products, as processed by Version 10 of the Off-Line Processing (OLP) system, retrievable from the legacy ISO Data Archive (IDA) at:

Besides OLP 10 software processing steps and product specific details, background information is provided about the ISOCAM instrument itself, its observational modes and all aspects of calibration.

Although it tries to contain as completely as possible ISOCAM related information, it should be stressed that this manual is not intended to support interactive data analysis. For specific algorithms to process and improve the results interactively we refer to the ISOCAM Interactive Analysis User's Manual, [28] and to the ISO's web page for the ISOCAM instrument:

         http://www.iso.vilspa.esa.es/ ISO Explanatory Library CAM.

This volume of the ISO Handbook serves as the reference for both the processing as well as the correct interpretation of ISOCAM data as available from the ISO Data Archive.