Subject: High Energy Astrophysics FITS group - HEAFITS

From: [email-masked] (William Pence)
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 93 17:25:34 -0500

This is to announce that a new electronic mail exploder, called
HEAFITS, has been set up for the purpose of discussing issues related
to FITS format files in High Energy Astrophysics (HEA).  This is
intended to be a more specialized group for discussion of HEA-specific
FITS issues that would not necessarily be of interest to the majority
of subscribers to the existing FITSBITS and WGAS mail exploders.

There is no strict charter for what topics can be discussed within the
HEAFITS group, but in general, the purpose of this mail distribution
group is to promote the development of standards for FITS files
containing data related to high energy astrophysics.  This includes,
but is not limited to, proposals for standard keyword names, or
standard binary table layouts and column names to be used for different
classes of HEA data.   More general issues such as proposals for
changes to the existing FITS Standard, or for new types of FITS
extensions, should more properly be addressed to the FITSBITS group,
rather than HEAFITS.

There are two mail addresses associated with HEAFITS.  The first
address should be used to subscribe or unsubscribe to HEAFITS.  Once
you have subscribed, the second address should then be used for posting
messages to the group, as explained in more detail below:

TO SUBSCRIBE OR UNSUBSCRIBE TO HEAFITS:

To subscribe to this mail exploder, interested parties should send a
one-line mail message to the following account:

                   [email-masked]

The body of the mail message should contain one line with the following text:

subscribe heafits Your Name

where 'Your Name' is obviously your own name.  To unsubscribe to the group, 
send a message to the the same address with the line:

unsubscribe heafits

We are currently in the process of automating this listserver
mechanism, but in order to not further delay the start of this group
the subscription and unsubscription process will be handled manually
for the present.  Therefore it may take up to a day from the time of your
request before your name is actually entered into the subscription
list.

TO POST MESSAGES TO THE HEAFITS GROUP.

Once you have subscribed to HEAFITS, you may then send messages to the other
members of the group by addressing your mail to 

                 [email-masked]

(Note that these messages should _not_ be sent to the listserv address).

I would suggest that new subscribers to this group wait until next week
before posting any messages to the group, to allow for a critical mass
of people to subscribe first.  I will send out a message next week to all
the subscribers, once it appears that there are enough people subscribed to
make a meaningful discussion possible.

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Bill Pence
High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC)
[email-masked] (Internet) or HEASRC::PENCE