[fitsbits] start of Public Comment Period on the Green Bank convention

[Bob Garwood]

The Green Bank convention is mentioned in WCS Paper I.  It's also used 
in the example header shown in Table 9 (apparently taken from a real 
example known to one of the authors) of WCS Paper 2, where 4  2048x2048 
images are stored in separate rows of a table.  All 4 images share most 
of the same WCS except for the reference pixels on each axis.  keywords 
are used for most of the WCS, but columns are used to store the 
reference pixels.  That's the Green Bank convention.

Bob

On 06/22/2015 02:43 PM, THIERRY FORVEILLE wrote:
>>> The proposed draft text is available at
>>> http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/FITS/Conventions/greenbank-upd2.pdf
>> I have to say I find way of storing images pretty confusing. What's the
>> advantage of storing them this way instead of creating separate FITS
>> extensions?
>>
> The context of the use cases that I know of is one where the images are 1D
> (single-dish radioastronomical spectra), small (O(1Kpixels)), and numerous
> (O(10^4)). Creating separate FITS extension would waste significant space
> (of order a factor of two), and also would not outline as well the structural
> unity of the dataset.
>
>>   Is it just of historical interest?
>>
> The convention is in use in single dish radio-astronomy. I don't know of
> any use case outside that field.
>
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