COMMISSION 5: DOCUMENTATION AND ASTRONOMICAL DATA

PRESIDENT:            G. A. Wilkens
VICE-PRESIDENT:       B. Hauck
ORGANISING COMMITTEE: O. B. Dluzhnevskaya, C. O. Jaschek, J. M. Mead,
                      L. D. Schmadel, F. Spite, W. H. Warren Jr., P. A. Wayman,
		      G. Westerhout
		      
REPORT BY THE PRESIDENT FOR THE PERIOD 1 NOVEMBER 1987 TO 30 JUNE 1990

  The aims of this report are, firstly, to review the activities of Commission 5
since the previous report and, secondly, to draw attention to other relevant
activities.  It is based mainly on contributions (shortened in some cases) from the
chairmen of the Working Groups and Task Groups, but other items of general interest
have been included.

[19 non-relevant paragraphs omitted.]

FITS STANDARDS (P. J. Grosbol)

    The FITS Working Group was confirmed by a resolution of the IAU General Assembly
at Baltimore (Trans. IAU 20B, 51-52), which also adopted extensions to the FITS
standard for formats for the encoding of astronomical images and associated data.
(FITS = Flexible Image Transport System; the new extensions are described in
Astron. Astrophys. Suppl. 73 (1988), 359-364 & 365-372.)  The Group acts as the
authority for the standard, and will review, approve and maintain any future
extensions. A FITS Support Office was created by NASA at the Goddard Space Flight
Center in 1989; it will assist the Group and individual users. One of its first
tasks is to prepare a Users Manual for FITS.

    The Group had held two meetings (at Charlottesville in January 1988 and at Green
Bank in November 1989) and has also carried out its activities by correspondence.
The topics considered include: the representation of non-linear coordinate systems;
the encoding of single-dish radio data; the adoption of the IEEE floating-point
agreement; a proposal for hierarchical keywords; the physical recording standard
for FITS files on new high-density devices; and a new extension that would allow
the highly-efficient storage of arrays and numbers in binary format. Further
details may be obtained from the chairman (at ESO, Garching) or from the vice-
chairman, D. Wells (at NRAO, Charlottesville).


Reference: Transactions of the International Astronomical Union, Vol. XXIA (1991),
Reports on Astronomy, pp. 7-10.