<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/xhtml;charset=UTF-8"/>
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=9"/>
<meta name="generator" content="Doxygen 1.8.4"/>
<title>WCSLIB 4.18: Introduction</title>
<link href="tabs.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="dynsections.js"></script>
<link href="doxygen.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
</head>
<body>
<div id="top"><!-- do not remove this div, it is closed by doxygen! -->
<div id="titlearea">
<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tbody>
<tr style="height: 56px;">
<td style="padding-left: 0.5em;">
<div id="projectname">WCSLIB 4.18
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
<!-- end header part -->
<!-- Generated by Doxygen 1.8.4 -->
<div id="navrow1" class="tabs">
<ul class="tablist">
<li><a href="index.html"><span>Main Page</span></a></li>
<li class="current"><a href="pages.html"><span>Related Pages</span></a></li>
<li><a href="annotated.html"><span>Data Structures</span></a></li>
<li><a href="files.html"><span>Files</span></a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div id="nav-path" class="navpath">
<ul>
<li class="navelem"><a class="el" href="index.html">WCSLIB 4.18 and PGSBOX 4.18</a></li> </ul>
</div>
</div><!-- top -->
<div class="header">
<div class="headertitle">
<div class="title">Introduction </div> </div>
</div><!--header-->
<div class="contents">
<div class="textblock"><p>WCSLIB is a C library, supplied with a full set of Fortran wrappers, that implements the "World Coordinate System" (WCS) standard in FITS (Flexible Image Transport System). It also includes a <a class="el" href="software.html">PGPLOT</a>-based routine, <a class="el" href="pgsbox.html">PGSBOX</a>, for drawing general curvilinear coordinate graticules and a number of utility programs.</p>
<p>The FITS data format is widely used within the international astronomical community, from the radio to gamma-ray regimes, for data interchange and archive, and also increasingly as an online format. It is described in</p>
<ul>
<li>"Definition of The Flexible Image Transport System (FITS)", FITS Standard, Version 3.0, 2008 July 10.</li>
</ul>
<p>available from the FITS Support Office at <a href="http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov">http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov</a>.</p>
<p>The FITS WCS standard is described in</p>
<ul>
<li>"Representations of world coordinates in FITS" (Paper I), Greisen, E.W., & Calabretta, M.R. 2002, A&A, 395, 1061-1075</li>
<li>"Representations of celestial coordinates in FITS" (Paper II), Calabretta, M.R., & Greisen, E.W. 2002, A&A, 395, 1077-1122</li>
<li>"Representations of spectral coordinates in FITS" (Paper III), Greisen, E.W., Calabretta, M.R., Valdes, F.G., & Allen, S.L. 2006, A&A, 446, 747</li>
<li>"Mapping on the HEALPix Grid" (HPX), Calabretta, M.R., & Roukema, B.F. 2007, MNRAS, 381, 865</li>
</ul>
<p>Reprints of all published papers may be obtained from NASA's Astrophysics Data System (ADS), <a href="http://adsabs.harvard.edu/">http://adsabs.harvard.edu/</a>. Reprints of Papers I, II (+HPX) and III are available from <a href="http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/Mark.Calabretta">http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/Mark.Calabretta</a>. This site also includes errata and supplementary material for Papers I, II and III.</p>
<p>Additional information on all aspects of FITS and its various software implementations may be found at the FITS Support Office <a href="http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov">http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov</a>. </p>
</div></div><!-- contents -->
<!-- start footer part -->
<hr class="footer"/><address class="footer"><small>
Generated on Sat Jul 13 2013 20:00:27 for WCSLIB 4.18 by  <a href="http://www.doxygen.org/index.html">
<img class="footer" src="doxygen.png" alt="doxygen"/>
</a> 1.8.4
</small></address>
</body>
</html>
