Subject: IAU General Assembly in Den Haag

From: Preben Grosbol <pgrosbol at eso.org>
Date: Fri, 09 Sep 1994 16:19:46 +0200

Dear Colleagues,
 There were several meeting related to the IAU FITS Working Group
during the IAU General Assembly in Den Haag Aug. 17-24, 1994. The
two most important points were:

 1) In the business meeting of Commission 5 on 18.8, the new
    structure was discussed. It will associate the FITS Working
    Group to the Working Group on Astronomical Data. It was
    emphasized in the discussion that FITS WG has the authority
    to maintain the FITS standard and to review, approve and
    maintain future extensions to FITS (ref. resolution B2
    of the 20th General Assembly). This infers that the FITS
    Group will have a very long life span to ensure the long
    term stability of FITS.

 2) Don Wells was elected new Chairman for the FITS Working Group
    with Ernst Raimond as Vice-chairman.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your
support and work in the FITS Working Group during the last years.  It
is a pleasure to wish both Don and Ernst all the best with respect to
the many important issues to be discussed in the coming years.

Best regards

Preben Grosbol

---

From: dwells at nrao.edu (Don Wells)
Date: Sat, 10 Sep 1994 03:13:06 GMT

Dear Colleagues,

I thank Preben Grosbol for his good wishes for me and for Ernst
Raimond as we begin our term as Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the IAU
FITS Working Group. I am sure that all friends of FITS will join me in
thanking Preben for his excellent leadership of the FITS community
during the past twelve years.  Preben's final term as Chair of the
IAU-FWG ended in an especially memorable fashion, with the final
acceptance of BINTABLE, IMAGE and Blocking as FITS standards.

During the FITS Working Group session in Den Haag on August 23rd,
Preben asked me to discuss plans for the next triennium. My vugraph
was titled "IAU-FWG project list for 1994-97", with these items:

1) Review/modify the relationship between FWG and IAU-EC+Comm5

As Preben noted in his message, we made real progress on this
critically important action item during the sessions at Den Haag, but
several questions remain to be settled during the coming triennium.

2) Approve the NOST FITS document (need units agreement)

The NOST FITS standard document has been in preparation for nearly
five years with the specific goal that it should be accepted by the
IAU FITS WG as the definitive standard for the FITS data format. Soon
this document will be submitted to the FITS community for review.

3) Make progress toward a WCS agreement

R&D efforts on "world coordinate systems" [WCS] for FITS began more
than ten years ago, and interoperable implementations were deployed
for radio interferometers and for the Einstein and IRAS spacecraft
during the 80s. The latest releases of IRAF support WCS, and are
interoperable with the prior implementations. The time appears to be
ripe for the WCS agreement. The latest draft of the WCS proposal,
ftp://fits.cv.nrao.edu/fits/documents/wcs/wcs.all.ps.Z, will be
discussed at the FITS Birds-Of-a-Feather session at the ADASS'94
meeting in Baltimore two weeks from now.

4) Make progress toward a compression agreement

I intend to encourage a renewed R&D effort on compression for FITS.

5) Register FITS with the Internet (IANA) as a MIME data type.

I intend to ask the IAU-FWG for permission to apply to the Internet
Assigned-Numbers Authority for a MIME [Multimedia Internet Mail
Extensions] code for FITS, so that FITS file objects can be
encapsulated in Email messages, and will be recognized by
non-astronomy application code.

I will be happy to receive comments about these action items, or about
other potential projects which the FITS community could undertake. 

Best regards,
Don Wells
Chairman, IAU FITS Working Group
--
  Donald C. Wells         Associate Scientist         dwells at nrao.edu
                    http://fits.cv.nrao.edu/~dwells
  National Radio Astronomy Observatory                +1-804-296-0277
  520 Edgemont Road,   Charlottesville, Virginia       22903-2475 USA