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The Explanatory Supplement is a reference text accompanying the public data delivered from the operations of the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite during its mission, and includes descriptions of all the products available via the Planck Legacy Archive. The Explanatory Supplement has been produced by the Planck Collaboration.

There are have been three major data releases of Planck products:

• PR1 in 2013 (all files are identified by the label *.R1.??) ;
• PR2 in 2015 (all files are identified by the label *.R2.??) ;
• PR3 in 2018 (all files are identified by the label *.R3.??) .

This is the Explanatory Supplement which accompanies the 2018 release. By default, it describes all the products issued in the 2018 release. In addition, the descriptions of the 2013 and 2015 products can also be found within this Explanatory Supplement, at the end of each section under the heading Previous Releases. Generally speaking, pages describing the 2018 releases have a white background; pages describing previous generations of products have a different color background: pink for 2015, and green for 2013.

Note that not all the products issued in 2015 have been updated in the 2018 release.

The main sections of the Explanatory Supplement are listed below.

1. Introduction
   1. The Planck mission
   2. The spacecraft
   3. Ground segment and Early operations
   4. Survey scanning and Routine operations
   5. Questions and answers
2. The instruments
   1. HFI design, qualification, and performance
      1. Cryogenics
      2. HFI cold optics and spectral response
      3. Detection chain
      4. Operations
      5. Performance summary
      6. Annexes
   2. LFI design, qualification, and performance
      1. Instrument description
      2. Ground tests
      3. In-flight calibration
      4. Performance summary
      5. Systematic effects
      6. Sorption cooler
      7. Annexes
3. Data processing
   1. HFI data processing
      1. Pre-processing
      2. TOI processing
      3. Beams
      4. Spectral response
      5. Systematic effects
      6. Mapmaking
      7. Internal overall validation
      8. Summary of HFI data characteristics
      9. HFI simulations
   2. LFI data processing
      1. Pre-processing
      2. TOI processing
      3. Beams
      4. Galactic stray light removal
      5. Mapmaking
      6. Systematic effects uncertainties
      7. Internal overall validation
      8. Summary of LFI data characteristics
   3. HFI/LFI joint data processing
      1. Detector pointing
      2. Compact source catalogues
      3. Astrophysical component separation
      4. CMB power spectra and Planck likelihood code
4. Planck Legacy Archive: mission products
   1. Timelines and Rings
      1. Timelines
      2. HEALPix rings
   2. Maps
      1. Frequency maps in Temperature and Polarization
      2. CMB maps
      3. Foreground maps
         1. Component maps
            1. Astrophysical components
            2. Astrophysical foregrounds from parametric component separation
            3. CO emission maps
            4. Thermal dust emission (Draine and Li model)
            5. Thermal dust and CIB all-sky maps (GNILC component separation)
         2. Specially processed maps
            1. Lensing map
            2. Lensing-induced B-mode map
            3. Compton y-map
            4. Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect map
            5. Low-frequency foreground maps
      4. Correction maps
      5. Masks
      6. Simulation data
      7. External maps
         1. WMAP
         2. Haslam
         3. IRIS
         4. WISE
         5. IRAM - Crab nebula
      8. Dates of observations
   3. Catalogues
      1. PCCS
      2. PSZ
      3. PGCC
      4. PHZ
   4. Cosmology
      1. CMB spectrum and likelihood code
      2. Cosmological parameters and MC chains
   5. Beams
      1. Scanning beams
      2. Optical beams
      3. Effective beams
      4. Beam window functions
   6. Instrument model
   7. Planet-related data
   8. Software utilities
      1. Unit conversion and colour correction
      2. SMICA weights propagation code
5. Planck value-added tools
6. Operational data
   1. Survey history data
   2. Satellite history data
   3. Planck operational state history
   4. Space radiation environment monitor
7. Appendix
   1. Glossary
   2. List of acronyms