📚 TABLFORM.TXT
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95 lines***** File TABLFORM.TXT
Table Data Descriptions
The International Halley Watch agreed early in the project that all data
would be submitted from the individual Disciplines to the Lead Center using
the FITS format (Wells et al., 1981). When the decision was made to
distribute this information on CD-ROM, it was determined that the data had to
have even broader accessibility. For this reason the original FITS files,
with contiguous headers and data, were split into separate files
distinguishable by their filename extensions (.HDR for headers). The file
sizes were preserved as multiples of 2880 bytes, allowing the original FITS
byte stream to be recovered by concatenating the appropriate header and
datafile. PDS labels were constructed to allow definition of the datafiles
for the Planetary Data System. For each datafile there must always be an
associated FITS header.
The convention for naming files on the IHW CD-ROMs was proposed by the
Lead Center and NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) personnel to include a
unique data qualifier for the data. Specifically, a set of subnet codes was
established to enable identification of the IHW Discipline/subdiscipline from
the filename itself. A CD-ROM running number and file extension complete the
filename. A short list of this convention for tables follows:
PDS Object FITS Discipline N Subnet File Ext
(description) NAXIS = Code
____________________________________________________________________________
table (filter) 0,2 IR Studies 4 IRFT .tab
table (photometry) 0,2 IR " IRPH .tab
table (polarimetry) 0,2 IR " IRPOL .tab
table (broad band) 0,2 Photometry Polar 5 PMAG .tab
table (narrow band) 0,2 " PFLX .tab
table (polarization) 0,2 " PPOL .tab
table (Stokes parameters) 0,2 " PSTOKE .tab
table (magnitude) 0,2 Amateur 8 AMV .tab
table (radar) 0,2 Meteor 9 MSNRDR .tab
table (visual) 0,2 " MSNVIS .tab
____________________________________________________________________________
A table linking the subnet codes above and the subdiscipline names is given in
Section 5 ('Filenaming Conventions') of the file HALGUIDE.TXT.
The file extensions follow suggestions by the Planetary Data System
(SPIDS v1.1; Martin et al., 1988) for tabular and image data. In addition,
for IHW FITS, the original headers and data were split into separate files,
with filename extensions as listed below.
.HDR - FITS header records
.LBL - detached PDS stream format
.TAB - table data records as ASCII
These PDS labels are metadata (as headers describing data submitted to the
archive). There has been no effort to duplicate the documentation contained in
the full FITS headers because the PDS and FITS headers for a given data file
differ only in the filename extension. Instead we have attempted to use the
power of the PDS label syntax to fully describe the data structures and thus
gain access to software by that group. Standards for the Preparation and
Interchange of Data Sets, Martin, T. Z., et al, Document D-4683, Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA
document version 1.1 was the primary reference to the Object Description
Language (ODL) necessary to create the PDS labels. (We acknowledge R. Borgen
and M. Martin, PDS-CN, JPL, for assisting the IHW through version 2.0 of the
ODL implementation for SPECTRUM.) The basic PDS descriptors such as
SFDU_LABEL, RECORD_TYPE, RECORD_BYTES, and FILE_RECORDS are explained in the
SPIDS document. The RECORD_TYPE for all data files is FIXED_LENGTH. The PDS
labels have been formed as fixed length (78 byte) plus an embedded CR and LF.
In creating the TABLE descriptions we have found a good correspondence
between the FITS and PDS syntax. For tables, the value of NAXIS2= ROWS,
TFIELDS=COLUMNS, and NAXIS1=ROW_BYTES; in both cases, the default FORMAT is
ASCII. We have attempted to describe the values in each column as a direct
translation of the FITS header file; the data itself follows the FITS record
format, i.e., ASCII characters with no delimiters and padded to multiples of
2880 bytes. The FITS data structure are currently supported by public domain
software that will be distributed with the Archive.
REFERENCES
Martin, T.Z., Martin, M.D., Davis, R.L., Mehlman, R., Braun, M., Johnson
M.: October 3, 1988, Standards for the Preparation and Interchange of
Data Sets, Version 1.1, JPL D-4683.
Wells, D.C., Greisen, E.W., and Harten, R.H.: 1981, Astron. Astrophys.
Suppl. Ser. 44, 363.