[fitsbits] Start of the WCS Paper III Public Comment Period

ANNOUNCEMENT: START OF FORMAL PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD


This is to announce the official start of the 4-week formal Public Comment
Period on the 3rd in a series of papers on FITS world coordinate systems
entitled, "Representations of spectral coordinates in FITS" written by Eric
Greisen, Mark Calabretta, Frank Valdes, and Steve Allen. This Public
Comment Period is the first step in the process of approving this paper as
part of the official FITS Standard.

This important paper describes detailed conventions for defining spectral
coordinates involving wavelength, frequency, and velocity in FITS files.
Links to the latest 04-October-2004 draft of this paper are available from
http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~egreisen/ and the latest version also may be
obtained directly in PDF and Postscript formats at

http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~egreisen/scs.ps (postscript)
http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~egreisen/scs.ps.gz (gzipped postscript)
http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~egreisen/scs.pdf (PDF)

This paper has gone through many revisions over several years, so as an aid
to readers of previous versions, the most recent changes to the document are
shown in red text and the somewhat earlier modifications made in February
2004 are shown in blue text.

Please review this paper carefully and post any comments, criticisms, or
suggestions on the sci.astro.fits newsgroup, or on the related FITSBITS
moderated mail list. (You can subscribe to FITSBITS at
http://listmgr.cv.nrao.edu/mailman/listinfo/fitsbits). If you previously
submitted comments about this paper that have not been incorporated in this
latest draft, and if you feel that they still need to be addressed, then
please submit the comments again.

There have been extensive previous discussions of this paper on the
'fitswcs' mail list at NRAO. The archive of these discussions may be viewed
at http://listmgr.cv.nrao.edu/mailman/listinfo/fitswcs.

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Background information on the FITS approval process

Under the "Rules and Procedures" of the IAU FITS Working Group, the first
step in the official approval process of any FITS proposal will be a formal
Public Comment Period to take place on the sci.astro.fits newsgroup
(and on the moderated FITSBITS mail list that mirrors all on-topic
postings). At the end of this public comment period the regional FITS
committees (North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia/New Zealand) will
then vote on the proposal. Following that the IAU FITS Working Group will
then conduct a final vote to approve or disapprove the proposal. These
rules and procedures are more fully described at
http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/iaufwg/iaufwg_rules.html.


William Pence
Chairman, IAU FITS Working Group
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__________________________________________________ __________________
Dr. William Pence
NASA/GSFC Code 662 HEASARC +1-301-286-4599 (voice)
Greenbelt MD 20771 +1-301-286-1684 (fax)