Publications (17)
Using the VO to Study the Time Domain
Rob Seaman, Roy Williams, Matthew Graham +1
Just as the astronomical "Time Domain" is a catch-phrase for a diverse group of different science objectives involving time-varying phenomena in all astrophysical regimes from the…
A near-Sun Solar System Twilight Survey with LSST
Rob Seaman, Paul Abell, Eric Christensen +9
We propose a LSST Solar System near-Sun Survey, to be implemented during twilight hours, that extends the seasonal reach of LSST to its maximum as fresh sky is uncovered at about 5…
A Tiled-Table Convention for Compressing FITS Binary Tables
William Pence, Rob Seaman, Richard L. White
This document describes a convention for compressing FITS binary tables that is modeled after the FITS tiled-image compression method (White et al. 2009) that has been in use for a…
The NOAO KOSMOS Data Handling System
Rob Seaman
KOSMOS and COSMOS are twin high-efficiency imaging spectrographs that have been deployed as NOAO facility instruments for the Mayall 4-meter telescope on Kitt Peak in Arizona and f…
The VAO Transient Facility
Matthew J. Graham, S. G. Djorgovski, Andrew Drake +3
The time domain community wants robust and reliable tools to enable production of and subscription to community-endorsed event notification packets (VOEvent). The VAO Transient Fac…
Data engineering for archive evolution
Rob Seaman
From the moment astronomical observations are made the resulting data products begin to grow stale. Even if perfect binary copies are preserved through repeated timely migration to…
FITS Foreign File Encapsulation Convention
Nelson Zarate, Rob Seaman, Doug Tody
This document describes a FITS convention developed by the IRAF Group (D. Tody, R. Seaman, and N. Zarate) at the National Optical Astronomical Observatory (NOAO). This convention i…
Time in the 10,000-Year Clock
Danny Hillis, Rob Seaman, Steve Allen +1
The Long Now Foundation is building a mechanical clock that is designed to keep time for the next 10,000 years. The clock maintains its long-term accuracy by synchronizing to the S…
IVOA Recommendation: Vocabularies in the Virtual Observatory Version 1.19
Sebastien Derriere, Alasdair J G Gray, Norman Gray +5
This document specifies a standard format for vocabularies based on the W3C's Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS). By adopting a st…
An Inventory of UTC Dependencies for IRAF
Rob Seaman
The Image Reduction and Analysis Facility is a scientific image processing package widely used throughout the astronomical community. IRAF has been developed and distributed by the…
Fpack and Funpack User's Guide: FITS Image Compression Utilities
William Pence, Rob Seaman, Rick White
Fpack is a utility program for optimally compressing images in the FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) data format (see http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov). The associated funpack progra…
The Future of Time: UTC and the Leap Second
David Finkleman, Steve Allen, John Seago +2
Before atomic timekeeping, clocks were set to the skies. But starting in 1972, radio signals began broadcasting atomic seconds and leap seconds have occasionally been added to that…
The Past, Present and Future of Astronomical Data Formats
Jessica Mink, Robert G. Mann, Robert Hanisch +5
The future of astronomy is inextricably entwined with the care and feeding of astronomical data products. Community standards such as FITS and NDF have been instrumental in the suc…
FITS Checksum Proposal
Rob Seaman, William Pence, Arnold Rots
The checksum keywords described here provide an integrity check on the information contained in FITS HDUs. (Header and Data Units are the basic components of FITS files, consisting…
Tiled Image Convention for Storing Compressed Images in FITS Binary Tables
Richard L. White, Perry Greenfield, William Pence +2
This document describes a convention for compressing n-dimensional images and storing the resulting byte stream in a variable-length column in a FITS binary table. The FITS file st…
Systems Engineering for Civil Timekeeping
Rob Seaman
The future of Coordinated Universal Time has been a topic of energetic discussions for more than a dozen years. Different communities view the issue in different ways. Diametricall…
IVOA Recommendation: Sky Event Reporting Metadata Version 2.0
Rob Seaman, Roy Williams, Alasdair Allan +12
VOEvent defines the content and meaning of a standard information packet for representing, transmitting, publishing and archiving information about a transient celestial event, wit…