[iaufwg] Voting Results on the HEALPix WCS convention

[William Pence]

Dear IAU FITS Working Group Members,

I am pleased to announce that the IAU FITS Working Group has unanimously 
approved the resolution on the HEALPix World Coordinate System convention, 
with only one abstain vote.  The actual vote count was 21 YES, and 1 ABSTAIN 
(the abstain vote was received 2006-04-05 04:36).   Therefore, the HEALPix 
spherical projection is now officially recognized as part of the FITS World 
Coordinate system (WCS) standard, in addition to the spherical projections 
that were previously approved in the FITS WCS Paper II ("Representations of 
celestial coordinates in FITS" Calabretta, M. R., and Greisen, E. W., 
Astronomy & Astrophysics, 395, 1077-1122, 2002).

This convention is defined in Section 6 of the paper "Mapping on the HEALPix 
grid" by Mark Calabretta and Boud Roukema which is currently available at 
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~mcalabre.  A copy of the paper will be put on the 
FITS Support Office web site shortly, along with updated information about 
its official approval status.


William Pence
Chairman, IAU FITS Working Group
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____________________________________________________________________
Dr. William Pence                       pence at milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov
NASA/GSFC Code 662       HEASARC        +1-301-286-4599 (voice)
Greenbelt MD 20771                      +1-301-286-1684 (fax)