[fitsbits] [mhvk at astro.utoronto.ca: Question about FITS format for logarithmic units]

[Thierry Forveille]

Quoting Marten van Kerkwijk <mhvk at astro.utoronto.ca>:
>
> From the discussion -- which I do find interesting! -- it seems that (as
> yet) the FITS standard similarly does not define these cases.  Like we
> already do for units with non-factor-of-ten scale, it may be best for
> now to simply warn the user that this cannot be stored in a way that one
> can count on other packages understanding, and give a hint on what would
> be needed to make it more easily supported.
>
> I do think eventually one would like to be able to handle such units,
> however ugly they are (they are just too commonly used...).
One possible way to handle them would be to convert the values to
the standard supported dex case, e.g. by dividing db values by 10.
I am not necessarily advocating that, but it would work.