FITS Standards Documents Don Wells (Chair, IAU-FWG) February 11, 1995 At the present time (February 1995) it is still true that the official defining documents for FITS are two papers published in 1981 plus two more papers published in 1988, all four in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement Series (see file papers.bib in directory /fits/documents/bibliography/ for references). The FITS community has long wanted to have a definitive compilation of the content of these four papers. The NASA/Science Office of Standards and Technology [NOST] has sponsored the creation of such a document. The NOST FITS standard document has been through several review cycles and has been examined by an accreditation panel, and was accepted as the NASA standard in July 93 (see fits_standard.mail). This document is widely expected to be adopted during 1994-5 by the IAU FITS Working Group (the official body which "owns" FITS) as the definitive FITS standard, superceding the published papers. Copies of the relevant NOST documents are in this directory. They were copied from the FITS directory on anonFTP server nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov, and were dated July 13, 1993 on that server. File fits_standard.ps is the document you want. Files fits_standard.tex and nost.sty are the source for this document, and file fits_standard.readme is the NOST README for these files. File fp89.txt is the Floating Point Agreement, which was approved by the regional FITS committees in 1988-89 and by the IAU FITS WG in December 1989, and which became effective in January 1990. The contents of this agreement have been incorporated in section 6.3 and appendix F of the NOST standard. Files blocking94.txt and image.{ps,tex} are now FITS standards. They were approved by a formal vote of the IAU FITS Working Group which closed on May 10, 1994, and they were made effective immediately. File bintable_aa.{ps, ps.gz, tex} is now a FITS standard. It was approved by a formal vote of the IAU FITS Working Group which closed on June 10, 1994, and it was made effective immediately. Version 'bintable_aa' incorporates minor wording changes made in 1994 in the course of the IAU-FWG review, plus a minor correction made in the course of preparing the paper for publication. This paper will be submitted to the Astron. & Astrophys. Supplement Series in January 95. The version which was approved in June 1994 is in directory bintable_old/. File xtension.txt is the official listing of reserved extension names, as maintained by the Chair of the IAU FITS WG; it is appendix G of the NOST standard.