[fitsbits] FITS 'keyword dictionaries'

[Steve Allen]

On Tue 2014-04-01T16:47:35 -0400, Joe Hourcle hath writ:
> I don't know if this is considered on topic for this mailing list or
> not.  If it isn't, I apologize, and would appreciate guidance on what
> might be a better forum for this question.

This has long been a back-burner concern, but there are other things
cooking furiously on the front burners right now.  Nevertheless, I
have updated my haphazard index of what we have to say about the FITS
keywords at Lick Observatory and in instruments we have delivered to
Keck Observatory.

http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/fits/

Alas, FITS headers being generated even now on older instruments may
have multiple instances of a keyword with different values for each
occurrence.

Regarding present operational concerns, we have long used the Keck
Task Library (KTL) concept wherein the control of the telescope and
instrument is isomorphic with the FITS keywords.  For the sake of both
engineering analysis and science we now record the values of all
changes of keyword values in a database.  This means that the control
software for all recent instruments includes a dictionary of its
keywords.

--
Steve Allen                 <sla at ucolick.org>                WGS-84 (GPS)
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