Subject: New drafts of WCS papers

From: Eric Greisen <egreisen at valen.cv.nrao.edu>
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 14:18:50 -0500 (EST)

Mark and I have been working to implement the understandings of the
last ADASS in Illinois in the form of 3 wcs papers.  The drafts of
papers I and III are now available for comment.  The long Paper II on
celestial coordinate projections needs a bit more work, although Mark
has made great progress.

Paper I: Representations of World Coordinates in FITS

     ftp://ftp.cv.nrao.edu/NRAO-staff/egreisen/wcs.ps

Paper III: Representations of Spectral Coordinates in FITS

     ftp://ftp.cv.nrao.edu/NRAO-staff/egreisen/scs.ps

are in PostScript form for printers with modern PostScript fonts (as
expected by A&A Supp).  They have no long figures.

I invite comment, preferably directed to me rather than filling the
fitbits with detail at this stage of the proceedings.  Of course, wider
comment will need to be made later and you may feel it appropriate
even now.  The spectral paper has a hole marked "HERE" where
suggestions for dealing with complex optical instruments might be
made.  One thought is that optical images that have spectra of
numerous objects overlayed on an RA-dec image may not even be amenable
to a FITS representation at that stage of their processing.  They may
only e suitable for tables of spectra at a later stage of analysis.
AS a radio astronomer, I do not know about such things and need your
help.

Thanks,

Eric W. Greisen (egreisen at nrao.edu)

and

Mark Calabretta (mcalabre at atnf.csiro.edu)