OBJECT names

[Nicolaas Kuin]

  I believe that creative use of the OBJECT keyword as discussed here
should not have an impact on the OBJECT designation, which should 
follow the IAU designation recommendations.  The advantages of using 
consistent designations are large.  Adding other information in the 
keyword field makes the whole meaning of KEYWORD=VALUE weak and sloppy
and meaningless.

  There is no reason that Keck and Lick could not introduce their own
LICK_OBJ for a string like 
LICK_OBJ = 'NGC 1234, 400 s, blue filter, 1200 line grating'
which then could be put into the header. I would strongly suggest to 
have some software go over this string which would make an intelligent 
guess for other FITS keywords (like OBJECT, FILTER, GRATING, etc.) 
and ask the observer to approve the  insertion into the FITS header 
of the automatically generated FITS keywords. It seems to me that 
software's function is to make life easier in this way. 

  Paul Kuin


Steve Allen <sla at ucolick.borg> wrote 
|In article <199804171526.LAA06339 at fits.cv.nrao.edu>,
|Don Wells  <dwells at NRAO.EDU> wrote:
|>The text should also recommend that data systems which originate
|>OBJECT strings (e.g., telescope/instrument data systems) encourage
|>observers to use strings which conform to the recommendations of the
|>Designations Task Group of IAU Commission 5 (Astronomical Data). The
|>text should cite "IAU Recommendations for Nomenclature"
|><http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/iau-spec.html>.
|
|Our data systems have always provided for the maximum possible FITS
|string length as the value for the object card.  Unfortunately, this
|opens the door for other forms of abuse.
|
|It is extremely commonplace for observers to set the string to something like
|OBJECT  = 'NGC 1234, 400 s, blue filter, 1200 line grating'
|This is done even though there may be other FITS keywords which contain
|the appended values.
|
|Indeed, there's movement to create a next-generation interface for
|Keck and Lick which will actually permit the observer to specify a set
|of keywords whose values are to be appended into the OBJECT string.
|
|Before we actually do this, I'd appreciate external commentary from
|the FITS community on the (lack of) merits of abusing the OBJECT
|keyword in this way.
|--------------------------------------------------------------- 
 Paul Kuin, Raytheon STX Corporation, 4400 Forbes Blvd., 
 Lanham, MD 20706, USA
 (301) 794-5195 <kuin at homer.stx.com>
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