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The IAU (International Astronomical Union) FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) Working Group maintains the List of Registered Extensions. The list includes a brief summary of the extension type corresponding to each name, the developer, and the status of the extension (e. g., standard, under discussion, local).

Chronology of FITS Activities of the IAU and the IAUFWG

  • July 1982: The IAU General Assembly endorses FITS, including the Random Groups format, as the recommended format for transport of binary data.
  • July 1982: Commission 5 forms a Task Group, headed by Preben Grosbol, to define and test a table extension to the FITS standard. The work of this Task Force resulted in a proposal for rules for generalized extensions to FITS and an ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) Table extension for table and catalog data.
  • July 1988: The IAU General Assembly endorses the Generalized Extensions and ASCII Table Extensions agreements.
  • July 1988: The IAU FITS Working Group (IAUFWG) is formed under IAU Commission 5 by a resolution of the IAU General Assembly. Preben Grosbol and Don Wells are elected chairman and vice-chairman, respectively.
  • 1 Jan 1990: The Floating Point Agreement, establishing IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 32-bit and 64-bit numbers as the standard FITS floating point data type, is approved by the IAUFWG.
  • 6 May 1994: The Physical Blocking agreement for FITS files on different media is approved by the IAUFWG.
  • 6 May 1994: The Image Extensions paper is approved by the IAUFWG.
  • 10 June 1994: The Binary Table Extensions paper is approved by the IAUFWG.
  • 18 August 1994: New IAUFWG officers are elected: Don Wells (chair) and Ernst Raimond (vice chair)
  • 11 Nov 1997: The Year 2000 DATExxxx keyword agreement is approved by the IAUFWG.
  • 12 Oct 2000: The NOST FITS Standard v2.0 is approved by the IAUFWG.
  • 18 Dec 2002: The World Coordinate Systems Paper I and Paper II are approved by the IAUFWG.
  • 21 July 2003: New officers of the IAUFWG are elected: William Pence (chair) and Francois Ochsenbein (vice chair).
  • 9 August 2004: The IAUFWG endorses the proposal for two FITS MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) types ("image/fits" and "application/fits") and recommends that it be submitted to the appropriate Internet regulatory committees for approval as an Internet standard. The regulatory committees ultimately granted final approval for these two MIME types in RFC (Request for Comments) 4047 that was issued in April 2005.
  • 9 August 2004: The creation of a fourth regional FITS committee, to represent astronomical institutions in Australia and New Zealand, is approved by the IAUFWG. Mark Calabretta (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) serves as the first chairman of this new committee.
  • 7 April 2005: The "variable-length array" facility in FITS binary tables, and the TDIMn = '(l,m,n,...)' multidimensional array keyword convention were approved by the IAUFWG to be incorporated into the official FITS Standard document. These two features had previously been defined in the unofficial appendices to the Standard.
  • May 2005: Issued an update of the official FITS Standard document (version 2.1) to reflect the changes that were approved in the previous month.
  • 18 August 2005: The World Coordinate Systems Paper III is approved as part of the FITS Standard by the IAUFWG. This paper defines how to represent spectral coordinates in FITS.
  • 8 December 2005: Three proposals to add support for 64-bit integers to the FITS Standard were approved by the IAUFWG: 64-bit integer primary arrays and image extensions, 64-bit integer columns in binary tables, and 64-bit descriptor columns in binary tables.
  • 26 April 2006: The HEALPix (Hierarchical Equal Area isoLatitude Pixelization) spherical coordinate projection was approved by the IAUFWG as an addition to the other spherical projections defined in WCS (World Coordinate Systems) Paper II.
  • June 2006: Established the rules and procedures for documenting existing FITS conventions in a new Registry of FITS conventions that is to be maintained on the FITS support office web site.
  • January 2007: Appointed a five-member technical panel to draft changes to update and clarify the FITS Standard document. The last major revision to this document was in 1999.
  • July 2008: Formally approved the new 3.0 version of the FITS Standard document after a lengthy public review process.
  • December 2013: The four regional FITS committees (North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia/New Zealand) were officially disbanded, and the formal IAUFWG voting rules were modified accordingly.
  • 9 June 2014: Officially approved the paper by Rots et al. titled Representation of Time Coordinates in FITS. This paper continues the series of previous papers which defined the representations of world coordinate systems in the celestial (sky) and spectral dimensions.

IAU FITS Working Group Detailed History

The IAU FITS Working Group is established under IAU Commission 5. Below are the available Triannual Reports and the transactions of the Business Meetings that are held at each IAU General Assembly meeting (every three years). A few other available status reports of IAUFWG activities are also listed. The annual reports of the American Astronomical Society Working Group on Astronomical Software also summarize some of the activities of the IAUFWG.

2009 August - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2006 August - Prague, Czech Republic

2003 July - Sydney, Australia

2000 - Manchester, UK

  • (Not Available)

1998 - ADASS (Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems) Meeting, Urbana, USA

1997 - Kyoto, Japan

1996 - ADASS Meeting

1994 - The Hague, Netherlands

1993

1992

1991: - Buenos Aires, Argentina

1988, Baltimore, USA

1986 - 3rd ADASS Meeting, Munich, Germany

1985 - New Delhi, India

1982 - Patras, Greece

The principal forum for FITS announcements and discussion is the FITSBITS email list. View the FITSBITS email archive (general FITS-related discussions). Further general information about FITS may be obtained from the FITS Support Office website.