[iaufwg] FITS Registry Proposal

[Clive Page]

On Fri, 24 Mar 2006, Steve Allen wrote:

> Currently the ds9 viewer must be told via external means what sorts of
> techniques it should use when viewing a Multi-extension FITS file
> conforming to the HST, or NOAO mosaic, or various X-ray, etc.,
> conventions.  It would be beyond very cool if by casual inspection of
> a FITS file it were possible to tell how it might be displayed.

That would indeed be a very useful facility.  We have recently come across 
this problem, having set up a web server to serve a variety of FITS files: 
some have primary images so one can set one's browser to use ds9 as a 
helper application, but some have no primary image but a table, where one 
would want the browser to invoke say FV or TOPCAT.   I didn't find a good 
way of making this distinction.


-- 
Clive Page
Dept of Physics & Astronomy,
University of Leicester,    Tel +44 116 252 3551
Leicester, LE1 7RH,  U.K.   Fax +44 116 252 3311