2023-11-06 –, BoFs
The FITS data standard has served astronomers well for four decades.
The original integer image format has been revised to support additional
pixel data types, to support world coordinates and other scientific
metadata, to include an integrated data compression framework, and to
support generalized binary tables, among other features.
Over the years, a variety of alternative scientific data standards have been
proposed. These usually reach only a limited audience specific to a particular
project or community. No other format has ever garnered the widespread
support of FITS.
We'll hear from several groups who are generating data and how they have
been using FITS standards and extending or creating standards for newer
projects. Are people talking across projects about new standards, even partial
ones? Have people published details of their standard formats? Where?
Rob Seaman is the Data Engineer and a Co-investigator for the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona. Using multiple survey and follow-up telescopes in Arizona and Australia, CSS has discovered nearly half of all near-Earth asteroids, including four impactors and two mini-moons. Rob serves as chair of the IAU Time Domain working group and co-chairs the SPIE Observatory Operations conference. His diverse interests include archiving, rapid transient response, data compression (FPACK), and timekeeping in astronomy.
As an astronomical software developer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, I have worked on data pipelines for instruments which produce spectra and scan the sky. At MIT, Cornell, and MIT again, worked on spectra of solar system objects, positions of stars and planets and modelled planetary rings and multiple stars from occultation data, all of which I wrote pipelines to reduce. Over the past I also have worked on inclusion, diversity, and equity issues in astronomy, locally, nationally, and internationally.