[fitsbits] Celsius unit in FITS keyword comments

[Maren Purves]

On 03/03/16 08:33, Steve Allen wrote:
> In this arena the FITS WCS papers, and the standard, have to remain
> using the word SHOULD rather than MUST.  This is not a subject where
> authoritarian sentiment nor reasonable arguments about simplicity for
> parsers of the FITS files can get an agreement for change.  If the
> IAUFWG were to hold a vote about requiring only SI units, and if I
> were to enquire the rest of the instrument engineering and
> construction teams how to vote, I would end up translating their
> two-word negative response into simply "No".

Coming from the engineering end I very much agree with Steve.

People who have to trouble shoot e.g. instrument behavior or telescope
pointing sometimes want rather strange (at least for somebody who
would only be interested in the actual description of the data)
things put into FITS headers in rather strange units.


Maren Purves
East Asian Observatory