Subject: long object names

From: willner at cfa183.harvard.edu (Steve Willner)
Date: Tue, 5 May 1998 13:50:42 -0400

I'm not a reader of this list, but I hope you won't mind my posting in
favor of somehow making long object names part of the FITS standard.
This could be done either by modifying the OBJECT keyword or by
inventing a new keyword, but I think either would be a valuable
addition to the FITS standard.

My interest in the subject comes from my own research (using FITS files
of infrared images) and from my role as a Scientific Editor of the
ApJ.  Sometimes I have to struggle with authors to make them use proper
object names, and anything that will make it easier to do that must be
a good thing.  Having correct names in the data files from the beginning
should be a help.

Relatively short names are probably enough for most "at the telescope"
use, but FITS is more and more being used for data archives.  In these,
it is important to know exactly which object the data are for, and as
Don Wells has pointed out, that can take a lot more than eight
characters.  Even for temporary archiving of raw telescope data, an
eight character field is a bit small now that we have multi-object
spectrographs.  Observers might well wish to label each spectrum with
the cluster name and object name within the cluster, and eight
characters may not be adequate.

If a change is made, I'd suggest allowing as many characters as are
technically feasible on a single 80-column "card" without encroaching
on other dedicated columns.  Once we have more than eight characters, I
doubt it makes much difference in reader programs how many characters
there are, and going to the maximum now will avoid having to make
changes later.  Also, be sure to allow the necessary special
characters:  colons and parentheses at least and preferably slashes and
equal signs as well.

As I say, I'm not a regular reader, so please cc me on any responses
you want me to see.