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Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems VI ASP Conference Series, Vol. 125, 1997 Gareth Hunt and H. E. Payne, eds.

FITS BoF Session
Peter Teub en Astronomy Department, University of Maryland, Col lege Park Don Wells National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesvil le Abstract. We summarize the discussions that took place during the FITS Birds of a Feather (BoF) session, which was held Monday, Septemb er 23, 1996 at 16:00. For completeness we also include a summary of the 1995 FITS BoF, which was never published.

1.

Introduction

This year marked the second FITS BoF at the ADASS. In previous years the WGAS meetings at the AAS Summer meetings provided a regular discussion ground, but with the introduction of the BoF sessions at the ADASS and a much more targeted audience, it was decided to hold these meetings at the annual ADASS. Most FITS-related communications take place on the newsgroup sci.astro.fits (and the associated "fitsbits"1 e-mail exploder). 2. FITS BoF session at ADASS VI

As always, a numb er of oral and p oster presentations sp ecifically discussed FITSrelated items. Oral pap ers by Clarke, Allen, Mink, Mandel, and Wells were presented in a sp ecial FITS afternoon session, and p osters were presented by Pence, Farris, Tripicco, and Stobie; see the pap ers by these authors elsewhere in this volume. The NOST/FITS Supp ort Office is resp onsible for two ma jor documents. First, the NOST standard is intended to define FITS in more precise terms. The technical panel met on Septemb er 11 and its chairman (Bob Hanisch) rep orted on some of the ma jor changes which were decided. The new version of the standard is exp ected to b e out for comments early in 1997. Second, the User's Guide provides background information, esp ecially examples, to aid in producing and interpreting legal FITS datasets. Version 4 is now b eing prepared (also available early in 1997); the IMAGE, BINTABLE and blocking agreements are now part of the regular text. It now also includes discussion of the World Coordinates draft (Greisen & Calabretta 1995).
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© Copyright 1997 Astronomical Society of the Pacific. All rights reserved.

FITS BoF Session

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The FITS Supp ort Office also maintains a Web site,2 which is one of the ma jor information clearinghouses for FITS. It includes the registered FITS extension typ es. The home page is accessed ab out ten times a day, and the NOST standard and User's Guide are retrieved ab out once a day. GrosbЬl rep orted on a recent sci.astro.fits/fitsbits discussion of the "year-2000" problem, which resulted in a prop osal by the Europ ean FITS committee which will b e discussed by other regional FITS committees and the IAUFWG. One p ossible starting date for a new format for the DATE-OBS (and related) FITS keywords will b e January 1, 1998. Wells discussed the prop osed MIME codes for FITS files. Efforts are still in progress to register several FITS data typ es with the Internet Assigned Numb ers Authority [IANA]. This past year has also seen some ma jor and minor improvements in existing software, and the introduction of some new and interesting tools: · FITSIO, FTOOLS, fv (Pence et al.) · CFITSIO (Pence) · MRDFITS in the IDL astronomy library up dated (McGlynn) · WCSLIB up dated (Calabretta) · FITSview (Cotton) · JAVA browser (Lu, NCSA) and FITSWCS Java Package (NCSA) A new version of the World Coordinate System draft is available, and all FITS users are urged to study it. Hanisch and Tody discussed some of their concerns with the current WCS prop osal during the BoF session. It b ecame clear that some issues, particularly with resp ect to large scale astrometric pro jections and mosaicking, will need to b e looked at in more detail. 3. FITS BoF Session at ADASS V (Tucson)

[A rep ort on the 1995 BoF was not included in the ADASS V volume.] From the FITS Supp ort office, Schlesinger rep orted on the status of the NOST Standard and the Users Guide. Version 1.1 of the NOST Standard has now b een approved by the Accreditation Panel (after some units revisions). The Technical Panel will start to work on Version 2, which will now include BINTABLE, IMAGE, and blocking. The FITS User's Guide is at version 3.1 with Version 4.1 under way. Schlesinger also presented an overview of the new Web site as a primary source of information for FITS and registration of FITS extension typ es. 3.1. News items · NOST standard approved by NASA, FITS committees to consider it for formal approval, sup erseding the four A&A pap ers. · BINTABLE pap er just came out! (Cotton & Tody 1995)
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http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/astro/fits/basics info.html

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Teub en and Wells · IDL: MRDFITS (Tom McGlynn, Goddard/CSC), FX* (Bill Thompson, Goddard/ARC), READFITS and WRITEFITS · FITSIO (V4.08 Octob er 1995) has b een up dated, and FTOOLS is running at version 3.3 · The WCS pap er has b een revised again, and now has an App endix-A. Wide-field survey p eople in particular should review this. · Pence introduced a (HEASARC based) prop osal to adopt the celestial coordinate keywords as defined in Greisen & Calabretta (1995) WCS pap er. · Wells discussed the planned application to IANA for FITS MIME code(s), probably to b e image/fits, application/fits-table and application/fits-image.

3.2.

Individual Contributions

Short contributions were presented by the following authors: · Don Jennings FITS hierarchical grouping prop osal. FITS and HDF communications (w/ Bill Pence - see also their p oster) · Immanuel Freedman FITS Data Compression: developments in Generic Data Compression, These developments relate to work p erformed on the COBE pro ject. (10 minutes) Field-level compression extensions. ROW or COLUMN pixel order. · Rob Seaman Checksum prop osal. We would like to thank Barry Schlesinger (GSFC/ADF Acknowledgments. FITS Supp ort Office) who could unfortunately not b e present, for preparing his news items. References Greisen, E. W., & Calabretta, M. 1996, Representations of celestial coordinates in FITS3 Cotton, W. D., Tody, D., & Pence, W. D. 1995, A&AS, 113, 159 Wells, D. 1997, this volume, 257

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