The Observation Context is the fist data product that you are likely to start with. It essentially contains your observation. It provides associations between products which are specific to a single observation (e.g. Level 0 products) as well as associations between products that are applicable to multiple observations (such as the calibration or auxiliary products). An Observation Context may have a state of completeness, which is defined by the processing of the data for that Observation, for example "scheduled", "Auxiliary data attached", "Calibration data attached", "Level0 data generated", "Level1 data generated". Thus the Observation Context changes its nature along the way of processing.

An Observation Context is generated per AOR, except for the SPIRE PACS parallel mode for which two Observation Contexts are produced, containing the SPIRE and PACS data respectively.

The Observation Context consists of the following contexts and products, which have been defined following the product types described in Section 2.1.