[fitsbits] start of Public Comment Period on compressed FITS image and tables

[William Thompson]

On 06/26/15 05:28, Lucio Chiappetti wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Jun 2015, William Pence wrote:
>
>> One can compress any binary table using fpack, but then one must uncompress it
>> with funpack
>
>> So the tile compressed table convention is mainly useful for archiving large
>> set of tables.
>
> archiving OR DISTRIBUTING

In fact, Solar Dynamics Observatory uses the FITS tiled image compression 
convention as a distribution system.  The images are stored in the archive in 
compressed format, but not as FITS files.  Instead, FITS files are formed on the 
fly upon user request from the header information and data stored in the archive 
database.

-- 
William Thompson
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Code 671
Greenbelt, MD  20771
USA

301-286-2040
William.T.Thompson at nasa.gov