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Rewrite units section based on comment from review
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Problem remains: can't get the acute accent over the
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Brian Thomas committed Nov 18, 2014
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16 changes: 16 additions & 0 deletions acfits.bib
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Expand Up @@ -187,6 +187,14 @@ @INPROCEEDINGS{1995ASPC...77..229J
adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}

@Misc{1995OGIPUnits,
author = {{George}, I.~M. and {Angelini}, L.},
title = "{Specification of Physical Units within OGIP FITS files}",
howpublished =
{\url{http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/heasarc/ofwg/docs/general/ogip\_93\_001/ogip\_93\_001.html}},
year = 1995
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{1997ASPC..125..257W,
author = {{Wells}, D.~C.},
title = "{Speculations on the Future of FITS}",
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -252,6 +260,14 @@ @INPROCEEDINGS{2000ASPC..216..243G
adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}

@Misc{2000CDSUnits,
author = {{Ochsenbein}, F.},
title = "{Standard for Documentation of Astronomical Catalogues}",
howpublished =
{\url{http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/doc/catstd.htx}},
year = 2000
}

@ARTICLE{2001A&A...376..359H,
author = {{Hanisch}, R.~J. and {Farris}, A. and {Greisen},
E.~W. and {Pence}, W.~D. and {Schlesinger},
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52 changes: 34 additions & 18 deletions acfits.tex
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Expand Up @@ -994,33 +994,49 @@ \subsection{Data Quality}


\subsection{Units}


The FITS support for units is syntactically flexible (albeit with
a few specification ambiguities which would be resolved by an explicit
grammar), but the model does not accommodate the full range of
contemporary astronomical data. This is evident from the significant
fraction of unit strings in current databases which do not conform to
the FITS prescriptions. The solution is not simply to expand the list
of recommended units since, as well as being slow, this fails to
distinguish between, for example, different definitions of the second,
or to communicate places where the distinction does or does not
matter.

There is also a provenance issue to defining new units, since -- to
pick the example of the unit of `Jupiter radius' -- two different
groups may prefer the mean or equatorial values for the radius, or in contrast
may regard it, not as simply an abbreviation for a certain number of
\label{sec_units}

A strength of FITS is that includes support for units within its core
standard. There are, however, limitations in the utility of the provided
specification.

First, while it syntactically flexible, there are a few
specification ambiguities which could be resolved by an explicit grammar.
This limitation has perhaps been one reason that others
have felt the need to publish more explicit prescriptions for units
\citep{1995OGIPUnits}. Another limitation is that the model does
not accommodate the full range of contemporary astronomical data. This
is evident from the adoption of other units systems by some major
archives such as the CDS (Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg,
\url{http://cds.u-strasbg.fr/}) which contains a large number of published
astronomical tables (see the units section within \citealt{2000CDSUnits}).
Finally, there is also a provenance issue to defining new units, since
-- to pick the example of
the unit of `Jupiter radius' -- two different groups may prefer the
mean or equatorial values for the radius, or in contrast may regard it,
not as simply an abbreviation for a certain number of
kilometers, but instead as a distance whose value is determined at a
certain atmospheric pressure level.

The solution to these limitations is not simply to expand the list of
recommended units since, as well as being slow, this fails to distinguish
between, for example, different definitions of the second, or to communicate
places where the distinction does or does not matter.

The purely syntactical issues surrounding unit strings are
being addressed by the IVOA's `VOUnits' work \citep{VOUnits}, but the higher
level questions -- of communicating and defining new units, of
indicating documentation, and of converting between them in a
scientifically meaningful manner -- are out of scope for that work by
design, since experience has shown them to be more contentious than
one might expect. These questions should perhaps be taken up by the FITS community.
one might expect. These questions should be taken up by the FITS community.

Solutions then may involve cherry-picking VOUnits syntactical fixes and
alteration of the units model to use some namespacing mechanism which
would help to disambiguate sources of extended units models found within a file.
Finally, we believe that an analysis of other more recent work, such as that
found in \citeauthor{VOUnits} and \citeauthor{2000CDSUnits} can help to quickly
round out the roster of standard units.


\section{Metadata and data representation}
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