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Using Foreign FITS Encodings

We saw in the previous section ([*]) how to store and retrieve any kind of AST Object in a FITS header by using a FitsChan. To achieve this, we set the FitsChan's Encoding attribute to NATIVE. However, the Objects we wrote could then only be read back by other programs that use AST.

In practice, we will also encounter FITS headers containing WCS information written by other software systems. We will probably also need to write FITS headers in a format that can be understood by these systems. Indeed, this interchange of data is one of the main reasons for the existence of FITS, so in this section we will examine how to accommodate these requirements.


Subsections

next up previous 264
Next: The Foreign FITS Encodings
Up: AST A Library for Handling World Coordinate Systems in Astronomy
Previous: Source and Sink Routines for FitsChans

AST A Library for Handling World Coordinate Systems in Astronomy
Starlink User Note 210
R.F. Warren-Smith & D.S. Berry
24th May 2011
E-mail:ussc@star.rl.ac.uk

Copyright (C) 2009 Science \& Technology Facilities Council