[fitsbits] Start of "Tiled Image Compression" Public Comment Period

[William Pence]

This is to announce the start of the 30-day public comment period on the 
"Tiled Image Compression" FITS convention that has been submitted for 
inclusion in the "Registry of FITS Conventions" that is maintained by the 
IAU FITS Working Group.

A document describing this convention, and some sample FITS files that 
illustrate its usage are available for public review and comment from the 
FITS registry web page at

         http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/fits_registry.html

Here is a brief description:

This is a convention for compressing FITS images and storing the compressed 
byte stream in a variable-length array column in a FITS binary table. 
Optionally, the image may be divided into rectangular tiles, and each tile 
is compressed separately. Any number of different compression algorithms can 
be supported. Current implementations support GZIP, RICE, H-Compress, and 
the IRAF pixel list compression algorithms.

Comments may be posted here on the FITSBITS mail exploder or the 
sci.astro.fits newsgroup.  Minor typographical issues may be sent directly 
to the authors of the convention.

Bill Pence
(on behalf of the IAU FITS Working Group)
-- 
____________________________________________________________________
Dr. William Pence                       pence at milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov
NASA/GSFC Code 662       HEASARC        +1-301-286-4599 (voice)
Greenbelt MD 20771                      +1-301-286-1684 (fax)