Chapter 1
Appendix: a few more points being considered

1.1  In the Objects

1.2  In the File Summary

• the description of the total file is the second line (the first line following the Note section) of the note, if any. See an example for Catalog V/95, or catalog ACT I/246

• a sample file is indicated by a .sam extension. The total number of records is then indicated as the first number in the explanation. See e.g. the USNO Catalogue I/252

1.3  In the Byte-by-byte Description

Comments in data file

Data files may include lines of comments:

• either as a given number of lines at the top of the file, introduced by:
  Byte-by-Byte Description (10 heading lines) of:
• or as lines starting by a specific character, introduced by:
  Byte-by-Byte Description (# are comments) of:

Labels new conventions

(extensions of the conventions in Section 3.3 of the conventions)

• Prefixes: d_label   for number of degrees of freedom or for number of digits

• Suffixes: complex numbers (dates and sexagesimal values) may have a suffix as a dot followed by a letter with conventions:
  .Y   .M   .D   for dates year, month, day
  .date   for full date (year, month, day)
  .h   .m   .s   for time hour, min, sec
  .d   .m   .s   for angle   °  '   "
  .time for full time (hour, minute, second, fractions)

• Frequently used labels:

  Epoch	Epoch of Coordinates (yr) labels like EpRA and EpDE are also used
  PosErr	Error on Position
  dRA, dDE	Differences in RA and Dec resp.
  oRA, oDE	Offsets in RA and Dec resp.
  MType	Morphological type
  Sp+Index	Spectral Index α, in the sense F(ν) ∝να
  Sp-Index	Spectral Index α, in the sense F(ν) ∝ν–α

"section_title" section reference

can refer to a section of the ReadMe file (example for catalog J/A+AS/104/315)

*File* labels

indicates a column which is a file (FITSfile indicates a file in FITS format). The text of the explanation must include either the word directory (i.e. files are in the catalog directory), or the word subdirectory followed by the name of the subdirectory where the file is located.

see file "described_file"

indicates that this column refers to another file. The link to the other file is generated.

(SIMBAD name)

in the explanation of a column means that the contents of this column can be injected into the SIMBAD data-base.

name in database

In the case of an external database, this would tell what's the name of this column in the foreign data-base which might not follow the standard conventions.

DMF

specifies a date in DMF format (seconds elapsed since 1980)

1.4  In the Notes

Global Notes

are an extension of the Lenghty Notes convention (of the second alternative). This extention is to allow several tables to refer to a unique text placed after the "Byte-by-byte" descriptions. These are simply refered as (Gn) as the last word in the explanations of a column, and the corresponding lengthy note must be introduced by a left-flushed text
Note (Gn):

file "filename" explanation

indicates that further details can be found in the file named filename. This filename must end with the .txt suffix.

Contents ⋅ Previous ⋅ Next

©UDS/CNRS  Contact: