Subject: High Energy FITS Format Standards

From: pence at tetra.gsfc.nasa.gov (William Pence)
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 93 16:18:03 EST

Lucio Chiappetti has asked what is the best forum for discussing data
format issues related to high energy astrophysics missions like ROSAT,
AstroD, AXAF, SAX, Spektrum-RG, XMM, XTE, etc.  The purpose of such
discussions would be to define  conventions for the use of FITS
standard formats to store similar types of high energy astrophysics
data. This would involve defining standard names for FITS keywords and
table columns and designing standard table column layouts for different
types of data, all within the current FITS standard.  Discussions of
expanding the FITS standard, e.g., to define new types of FITS
extensions, would be beyond the scope of this discussion group.

My own preference would be to have a separate mail exploder
specificly for discussion of High Energy Astrophysics data related
issues.  I think the WGAS and FITSBITS groups are both too broad in
nature for this purpose which would make it difficult to reach a
concensus.  It would be better to have a smaller and more focused group
to discuss these specific issues.  There would be no attempt to
limit membership to this discussion group, but I would expect
the core members to be the 1 or 2 people from each high energy astrophysics
mission that are most directly concerned with data format issues,
as well as the writers of general analysis software for this
type of data.

The HEASARC already maintains a mail distribution list like this
consisting of people interested in FITS data formats for the CGRO,
ROSAT, AstroD, and XTE missions.  These people are mainly located at
GSFC, but there are a few at other sites.  We would be happy to expand
the membership of this list to include anyone interested in these
issues.

-Bill Pence