The accuracy of rayleigh scattering calculation affects the quality of atmospheric correction of the ocean color remote sensing significantly.This paper studies how satellite attitude affect the accuracy of the rayleigh scattering calcula-tion.Satellite attitude directly affects the calculation of the relative geometries of sun and sensor

which determine the rayleigh scattering radiance.The results show that roll angle affects rayleigh scattering calculation markedly

and the cal-culation error can reach10%as the roll angle is2.5°.However

the effects of the pitch angle and yaw angle are small

and the calculation error is only1%as the pitch angle or yaw angle is2.5°.The result also shows that in order to achieve the1%accuracy goal of the rayleigh scattering calculation

the satellite roll angle should be less than0.3°if the satellite attitude isn’t corrected in the ocean color remote sensing data preprocessing stage.