[Aavso-photometry] FITS Keyword standard

[Michael Newberry]

Jim,

I appreciate what you are saying, and it is unfortunate that you have to 
make those extra steps. But that is not the fault of IRAF or MIRA. The 
programs you mention that control your camera or telescope need to clean up 
any non-standard issues so they use the correct keywords to start with. 
There is no good served by having images that begin life with the wrong 
header structure---only extra work and gotchas downstream, as you have 
found. That's why there is *one* standard. You should pressure the software 
vendor to adhere to it.

Michael

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Jones" <nt7t at centurytel.net>
To: "AAVSO Photometry" <aavso-photometry at mira.aavso.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2008 11:32 PM
Subject: Re: [Aavso-photometry] FITS Keyword standard


> Unfortunately neither IRAF nor MIRA control cameras or telescopes.  That
> makes it difficult to "Just use software that follows the FITS standard".
>
> Unless things have changed in the last year, in order to use MIRA I have
> to run my images from SBIG products through a script that conforms the
> FITS header to the requirements of MIRA.
>
> It would make things much easier for the users if the various folks
> producing programs could agree on a "dictionary" of keywords.
>
> Jim Jones
>
> Michael Newberry wrote:
>> Don't bother worrying about dictionaries of FITS keywords---there's only 
>> one
>> standard and one "dictionary" for all the important keywords that would
>> probably be of importance to you. FITS involves a very specific header
>> structure, keyword names, data types, and formats for how the quantities 
>> are
>> stored by the keywords. Just use software that follows the FITS standard.
>>
>> The only cacophony that may exist is if a piece of software does not 
>> follow
>> the standard. FITS format basically sets up 3 classes of keywords: 
>> standard,
>> conventional, and private. The standard keywords are those that must use
>> particular names, such as NAXIS, EXPTIME, and OBJECT. The conventional
>> keywords are those which are not forced to have specific names but which
>> have names that are more or less universally adopted within the 
>> professional
>> community of observatories and institutions, such as RDNOISE, GAIN, and
>> IMAGETYP. A "true" conforming FITS reader is required to understand the
>> standard keywords and should, as a matter of professional ettequite,
>> understand the conventional keywords. The 3rd set, the private keywords. 
>> are
>> those that anyone can create for their own use but which no other FITS
>> reader is required to understand. The standard and conventional keywords 
>> are
>> to be used when appropriate and may not be replaced by private keywords 
>> for
>> the same quantity---a common error of this type being to use EXPOSURE for
>> EXPTIME, EGAIN for GAIN, or NOISE for RDNOISE. Two pieces of software 
>> that I
>> do know follow the FITS standard strictly are IRAF and MIRA.
>>
>> Michael Newberry
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "Mark Munkacsy" <Mark_Munkacsy at alum.mit.edu>
>> To: <aavso-photometry at mira.aavso.org>
>> Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2008 7:53 PM
>> Subject: [Aavso-photometry] FITS Keyword standard
>>
>>
>>
>>> Does the AAVSO endorse any particular dictionary of FITS keywords?
>>> One of my long-term projects is to clean up the cacophony of FITS
>>> keywords that I've used in the various software packages I've written to
>>> manage my own observing sessions. I've discovered several FITS keyword
>>> dictionaries (see http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/fits_dictionary.html), but
>>> none seems appropriate off the shelf for AAVSO observing programs. Is
>>> there anything approaching a "standard" in use by the VSO community?
>>> - Mark
>>>
>>> --------------------------
>>> Mark Munkacsy (MMU)
>>> Portsmouth, RI, USA
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
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