On Mon, 14 Aug 2006, Mark Taylor wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Jul 2006, Tim Jenness wrote:
>
> > >> One thing GAIA could usefully use PLASTIC is to send a spectrum from the
> > >> cube to SPLAT (requires PLASTIC SPLAT but I assume given the TOPCAT
> > >> infrastructure that this is relatively easy).
> > >
> > > Yes, basic PLASTICisation of SPLAT should be fairly straightforward -
> > > I should be able to take a look when GAIA looks in better shape, unless
> > > Peter wants to. There's currently no spectrum-specific message defined,
> > > but we can add one. Think VOSpec is PLASTICised to some extent,
> > > not sure if it coopts one of the VOTable-specific messages for this
> > > purpose (though I don't think that would be the best way to do it).
> >
> > If you could squeeze splat/plasticification in then that would be great.
> > GAIA already has a "send to SPLAT" feature but it would be best to
> > standardise that.
>
> I'll take an initial look at this, though I don't know yet whether
> I'll have the time to do it properly.
>
> Question: what format makes most sense for exchange of spectra between
> GAIA and SPLAT? I suppose either a 1-D FITS image or a table
> (FITS or ASCII) - in the latter case there have to be some implicit
> assumptions or explicit information about which columns mean what.
> If it's going to be a PLASTIC message it would be best to use a
> format with well-defined syntax and semantics, so 1-D FITS may be
> best. Although there are existing tools (VO-Spec) which exchange
> spectra over PLASTIC I'm not totally certain they're doing it in
> a way which is most sensible for these purposes.
Hi Mark,
I'd expect that VO-Spec will be sending/receiving FITS-tables, not 1D FITS
(probably wrapped by a VOTable to keep their special units meta-data),
unless they have done some major changes/re-think. Naturally SPLAT will
display both, but understands 1D best (thanks to AST), so as Tim says that
would be our choice.
However, just to muddy the waters, currently GAIA is sending SPLAT
text-spectra, in some SPLAT specific format (just needs some work to
create proper spectra when I find a moment, didn't want to have a release
in which the extracted spectra, especially the region ones, couldn't be
saved, so I applied a quick hack).
Cheers,
Peter.
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