<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN"> <!--Converted with LaTeX2HTML 98.1p1 release (March 2nd, 1998) originally by Nikos Drakos (nikos@cbl.leeds.ac.uk), CBLU, University of Leeds * revised and updated by: Marcus Hennecke, Ross Moore, Herb Swan * with significant contributions from: Jens Lippmann, Marek Rouchal, Martin Wilck and others --> <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>FITS Format</TITLE> <META NAME="description" CONTENT="FITS Format"> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="vol1"> <META NAME="resource-type" CONTENT="document"> <META NAME="distribution" CONTENT="global"> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <LINK REL="STYLESHEET" HREF="vol1.css"> <LINK REL="next" HREF="node118.html"> <LINK REL="previous" HREF="node109.html"> <LINK REL="up" HREF="node109.html"> <LINK REL="next" HREF="node111.html"> </HEAD> <BODY > <!--Navigation Panel--> <A NAME="tex2html1921" HREF="node111.html"> <IMG WIDTH="37" HEIGHT="24" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ALT="next" SRC="icons.gif/next_motif.gif"></A> <A NAME="tex2html1917" HREF="node109.html"> <IMG WIDTH="26" HEIGHT="24" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ALT="up" SRC="icons.gif/up_motif.gif"></A> <A NAME="tex2html1911" HREF="node109.html"> <IMG WIDTH="63" HEIGHT="24" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ALT="previous" SRC="icons.gif/previous_motif.gif"></A> <A NAME="tex2html1919" HREF="node1.html"> <IMG WIDTH="65" HEIGHT="24" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ALT="contents" SRC="icons.gif/contents_motif.gif"></A> <A NAME="tex2html1920" HREF="node216.html"> <IMG WIDTH="43" HEIGHT="24" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ALT="index" SRC="icons.gif/index_motif.gif"></A> <BR> <B> Next:</B> <A NAME="tex2html1922" HREF="node111.html">Structure of FITS files</A> <B> Up:</B> <A NAME="tex2html1918" HREF="node109.html">Data Exchange Format</A> <B> Previous:</B> <A NAME="tex2html1912" HREF="node109.html">Data Exchange Format</A> <BR> <BR> <!--End of Navigation Panel--> <H1><A NAME="SECTION001110000000000000000"> </A> <A NAME="ch07:fits-format"> </A> <BR> FITS Format </H1> The FITS format provides a general way to encode both a definition of data and the data themselves in a machine independent form. The original definition is published in a number of articles, see Wells et al. [<A HREF="node126.html#fits:81">1</A>], Greisen et al. [<A HREF="node126.html#fits:81a">2</A>], Grosbøl et al. [<A HREF="node126.html#fits:88">3</A>] and Harten et al. [<A HREF="node126.html#fits:88a">4</A>]. A good general introduction to FITS can be found in [<A HREF="node126.html#nasa:ug">5</A>] while a concise description is given in [<A HREF="node126.html#fits:100">6</A>] both available through the NASA FITS Support Office and its anonymous ftp archive at Internet node <TT>nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov</TT>. <P> <BR><HR> <!--Table of Child-Links--> <A NAME="CHILD_LINKS"> </A> <UL> <LI><A NAME="tex2html1923" HREF="node111.html">Structure of FITS files</A> <LI><A NAME="tex2html1924" HREF="node112.html">FITS data-types and extensions</A> <LI><A NAME="tex2html1925" HREF="node113.html">FITS keywords</A> <UL> <LI><A NAME="tex2html1926" HREF="node114.html">Standard keywords</A> <LI><A NAME="tex2html1927" HREF="node115.html">Non-standard keywords</A> <LI><A NAME="tex2html1928" HREF="node116.html">Hierarchical keywords</A> </UL> <LI><A NAME="tex2html1929" HREF="node117.html">Restrictions</A> </UL> <!--End of Table of Child-Links--> <BR><HR> <ADDRESS> <I>Petra Nass</I> <BR><I>1999-06-09</I> </ADDRESS> </BODY> </HTML>
