Home | News | Docs | WCS | Samples | Libraries | Viewers | Utilities | Keywords | Conventions | Resources
Recent FITS Activities and Issues
Version 3.0 of the FITS Standard
In July 2008, the IAU FITS Working Group offically approved the new 3.0 version of the FITS Standard document.
The HEALPix spherical WCS projection
In April 2006, the IAU FITS Working Group offically approved the HEALPix spherical coordinate projection as an addition to the other projections that are defined in the WCS Paper II.Support for 64-bit integers
Effective 8 December 2005, the IAU FITS Working Group approved the proposals to add support for 64-bit integers to the FITS Standard (i.e, images with BITPIX = 64 and binary table columns with TFORMn = 'K' and 'Q'). The 64-bit images were approved conditionally, so the exact wording of this change in the FITS Standard is still under negotiation. See the dedicated web page for more details about this changeFITS WCS Papers III and IV
The 3rd FITS WCS paper on "Representations of spectral coordinates in FITS" was approved by the IAU FITS Working Group in August 2005. The paper is now in the editorial review stage before publication in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal.The draft of the 4th FITS paper, "Representations of distortions in FITS world coordinate system" is available from Mark Calabretta's web site. In addition, a proposal by Steve Allen and Doug Mink for concatenating WCS keywords may be incorporated into the final version of 4th WCS paper.
Conventions for Mosaic Images
Various issues related to the need for standardized FITS keywords for reporting of world coordinates in mosaic images have been raised in a draft document by Steve Allen.
Home | News | Docs | WCS | Samples | Libraries | Viewers | Utilities | Keywords | Conventions | Resources
Last revised: Wednesday, 09-Jul-2008 15:58:13 EDT
Contact us: fits @ fits.gsfc.nasa.gov
Hosted by: The HEASARC (High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center)
Responsible NASA representative: Dr. William D. Pence Privacy, Security & Accessibility Statements.