[fitsbits] the need for BITPIX=64?

[Preben Grosbol]

On Friday 17 June 2005 23:17, Thierry Forveille wrote:
>  > Do you not consider any of the 15 cases given in my email of
> 07-June-2005 > real or practical?  This included:
>  >
>  >    - histogram arrays derived from very large databases
>  >    - arrays of measured time values
>  >    - arrays of 'accumulated sums'
>  >    - the need to import data from other sciences (space physics,
>  >      planetary research, earth sciences) into FITS
>  >
> All of these examples are to some extent a bit academic:
> - histogram arrays and accumulated sums presumably have enough Poisson
> noise that no significance is lost by storing them as floats (64 bits
> floats if needed)
> - tables look like a better match than images for arrays of time values.
> - other sciences presumably have similar limitations to their dynamical
>   ranges, or at least we haven't yet really heard of one that does not.
> What's lacking for now is somebody that says "Hey, I (will) have a data set
> that I want to write to disk that requires 64 bit integers".
Yes, this was exactly also my considerations.
 - histogram need not have equal bin size - thus table are better
Preben