COMMISSION 5: DOCUMENTATION AND ASTRONOMICAL DATA

PRESIDENT: B. Hauck                    SECRETARY: H. Andernach

Session 1: BUSINESS MEETING       18 August 1994        Chairman: B. Hauck


1.  Report of the President for 1991-1994:

[...] 

   The main problem that the SOC had to deal with was determining a new
structure for Commission 5 as well as its status after restucturing of the IAU
Commisions as a whole.
    The SOC has discussed the proposals of the IAU General Secretary, J. Bergeron,
concerning the restructuring of commissions.  B. hauck, in his reply to J. Bergeron,
underlined that Commission 5 is not a scientific commission but an advisory
commission to the Executive Committee.  Commission 5 wishes to act more than in
the past as an advisory body to the Executive Committee, to other commissions
and also to editors.

[...]

5.  Working Groups and Task Groups for 1994-1997

The  following WGs and TGs and their chairpersons were agreed on:

WG Astronomical Data: E. Raimond
WG Information Handling: A.G. Hearn
WG Libraries: W.H Warren/ b. Corbin
TG FITS: D. Wells
TG Data Centres & Networks: M. Creze
TG Designations: H. Dickel
TG Thesaurus: R. Shobbrook
TG UDC 52: G. Wilkins

[...]

Session 2              23 August 1994

[...]

TG FITS (Chair: P. Grosbol).  P. Grosbol summarized activities of the past
triennium.  A formal voting procedure for approval of new proposals for the FITS
format was defined by the Working Group.  It was agreed that at least 3/4 of the 
members must vote for a proposal to have it accepted.  Following this procedure
the proposals for the binary 3-D table extension (BINTABLE), the image extension
(IMAGE) and the blocking rules were accepted as new standards.  They had already
been supported by the European, North American and Japanese FITS Groups as
required for a formal vote in the IAU FITS Working Group. Thus, these proposals
have become a part of the FITS standards by the mandate given to the FITS WG by the
General Assembly (ref. resolution B2, 20th IAU GA).  The NASA Office of
Standards and Technology (NOST) made a significant contribution with concise
description of the FITS standard. This document was subjected to a rigorous review
procedure to ensure conformity.  The Office also issued a FITS users guide and
provides support for the community.  Extensive information on FITS is available
via anonymous ftp at the Internet host "fits.cv.nrao.edu" and on the WWW mosaic
pages. It includes standard documents, traffic on the FITS News group and test files.
D. Wells, the new chairman for 1994-1997, outlined the main activities for this
period.  They include a critical review of the relationship between Working Group
and Union, and approval of the NOST FITS document with a clarification of the
usage of physical units.  Further, the group will work toward agreements on a
standard representation of World Coordinates and usage of data compression.


Reference: Transactions of the International Astronomical Union, Vol. XXIIB (1996),
pp. 123-126.