Application example for FITS

[Rob Seaman]

"Michael Wichmann" <mwichmann at metronet.de> writes:

> I'm looking for a more comprehensive description of the FITS format
> than the official NOST definition. This maybe simply a junk of code
> that deals with an FITS image. If somebody has any information about
> the FITSystem I would be glad if you let me know.

Take a look at:

    http://legacy.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/fitsio/fitsio.html

A couple of general FITS pointers are:

    http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/astro/fits/basics_info.html
    http://fits.nrao.edu

The real answer to your question is that there is no more comprehensive
description of fits than the standards as published in the journals and
adopted by the IAU.  The NOST document is the NASA codification of the
original standards (and may be adopted by the IAU itself).

If you code accurately to the standard, your resulting data structures
will be readable by other conforming FITS software.  Note that a FITS
User's Guide is also available from:

    http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/astro/fits/fits_home.html

that expands on various issues, but the text of the User's Guide is not
part of the official standard.

This is unlike other data formats that are defined by a changing software
interface.  In this case, the best one can hope for is to agree to some
particular version level of the software, and to also hope that the
interface continues to support your data format version(s) indefinitely.

Rob Seaman
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seaman at noao.edu, http://iraf.noao.edu/~seaman
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