Subject: WGAS annual report

From: Bob Hanisch <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 93 16:58:20 -0400

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\begin{center} \large \bf
Working Group on Astronomical Software \\
Annual Report \\
\normalsize \bf
Submitted by R. J. Hanisch, Chair \\
15 April 1993 \\
Revised, 23 June 1993 \\
\end{center}

This report covers the period from June 1992 (after the Columbus
AAS Meeting) through June 1993 (including the Berkeley meeting).

WGAS members continued their participation in the NASA/Science Office of
Standards and Technology FITS Technical Panel, whose charter was to codify the
existing FITS standards in a manner acceptable as a formal NASA standard.  The
committee is chaired by R. J. Hanisch.  All work on the proposed standard was
completed in the winter of 1992 following a period of public review and
comment.  The standard has now been reviewed by NASA's accreditation panel and
been approved for acceptance as a NASA standard.  It is expected that the WGAS,
European FITS Committee, and ultimately the IAU Commission 5 FITS Working Group
will approve the NASA document as the official FITS standard, superceding
the various FITS papers that have been published separately.

At the winter 1993 (Phoenix) Council meeting, the WGAS FITS Committee was
authorized to vote on extensions and modifications to the FITS standard on
behalf of the Society.  The WGAS FITS Committee has been constituted to include
broad representation in the user community, with representatives from the major
astronomical software groups, major observatories, and end-users.  The
membership of this committee is as follows:

\begin{center} \begin{tabular}{|ll|}
\hline
Don Wells, NRAO (Chair)                 & [email-masked] \\
Lee Brotzman, NSSDC                     & [email-masked] \\
Dennis Crabtree, DAO/CADC               & [email-masked] \\
Eric Greisen, NRAO                      & [email-masked] \\
Bob Hanisch, ST ScI (ex officio)        & [email-masked] \\
Arne Henden, OSU                        & [email-masked] \\
Bob Kibrick, Lick Obs.                  & [email-masked] \\
William Lupton, Keck Obs.               & [email-masked] \\
Eric Mandel, SAO                        & [email-masked] \\
Bob Narron, IPAC                        & [email-masked] \\
Bill Pence, HEASARC                     & [email-masked] \\
Jeff Percival, U.Wis.                   & [email-masked] \\
Skip Schaller, U.Ariz.                  & [email-masked] \\
Barry Schlesinger, NASA FITS Office     & [email-masked] \\
Peter Teuben, U. Md.                    & [email-masked] \\
Randy Thompson, IUE                     & [email-masked] \\
Doug Tody, NOAO                         & [email-masked] \\
Michael Van Steenberg, NSSDC            & [email-masked] \\
Archie Warnock, NSSDC                   & [email-masked] \\
Winifred Williams, NSO                  & [email-masked] \\
 & \\
Preben Grosbol, ESO, IAU (non-voting)   & [email-masked] \\ \hline
\end{tabular} \end{center}
 
In April the WGAS FITS Committee had its first serious business to consider:
voting on an agreement on blocking standards for media other than
$\frac{1}{2}$-inch 9-track magnetic tape, and approval of two new FITS
extensions -- binary tables ({\tt BINTABLE}) and images ({\tt IMAGE}).  Don
Wells, chair of the WGAS FITS Committee, announced a call for votes on these
proposals on 7 April 1993.  On 1 June 1993 Don announced the results: a
unanimous vote, 20--0, in favor of all three proposals.  The European FITS
Committee had already approved these proposals, originally in April 1992
with a reaffirmation in April 1993.  The Japanese FITS Committee,
chaired by Shiro Nishimura, reported its approval of all three proposals
on 19 June 1993.  These proposals will now be considered by the IAU FITS
Committee, hopefully in time for consideration by the IAU General Assembly
in The Hague.

A WAIS server for FITS documents has now been established on host
fits.cv.nrao.edu [192.33.115.8] which allows users to search the FITS
literature (standards documents, source code, test data sets, and the
archive of the FITS mail exploder and sci.astro.fits newsgroup postings.
These files may also be accessed directly with FTP (for example, look 
under fits/documents/standards for a copy of the NASA FITS Standard,
and under fits/documents/proposals for the text of the three approved
proposals mentioned above.

Following on the success of the First Astronomical Data Analysis Software and
Systems (ADASS) conference (Tucson, October 1991), a second ADASS conference
was held in Boston in November 1992.  Attendance was again well over 300, with
over 100 papers presented.  ADASS III will be held in Victoria, BC, in October
1993, and ADASS IV is currently be planned for Baltimore in late September
1994.

A special interest group meeting on world coordinate systems in FITS was held
during ADASS II.  This meeting led to the development of a draft proposal for
handling coordinates in FITS, compiled by Eric Greisen (NRAO) and Mark
Calabretta (ATNF), which supercedes the draft prepared several years earlier by
Hanisch and Wells.  The document has been distributed by FTP and was 
discussed further at the Berkeley WGAS meeting.  We hope to move forward with
an agreement on a standard notation for standard sky projection geometries
as quickly as possible.

The Berkeley WGAS meeting consisted of a morning session with contributed
papers and status reports and an afternoon business session dealing primarily
with FITS issues.  Barry Schlesinger gave a status report on the activities of
the NASA FITS Support Office at GSFC.  In addition to the work on the NASA FITS
document, Barry's office is developing a FITS verification program and FITS
User's Guide.  Initial copies of both are available from the FITS Support
Office ([email-masked]).  Don Wells presented the annual FITS
status report, and led the discussions regarding several new issues.
A proposal has been put forward by Bill Pence and Arnold Rots that would
allow string-valued keywords to extend over multiple card images.  Several
people expressed concern about this proposal, at the same time recognizing
the occasional need for long text strings.  Discussion is likely to continue
at the January 1994 WGAS business meeting.

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