6.1.1 On-line Information

  The FITS Support Office maintains World Wide Web and ftp sites at Goddard Space Flight Center. The FITS Support Office home page is at http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/. It describes the on-line material available from the FITS Support office and provides links both to the available hypertext material and to the material available at the ftp site nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/fits/. It also links to other FITS resources on the Web. The ftp site has an aareadme.doc file that can be accessed directly, for those without Web connections.

The FITS Basics and Information page can be reached from the home page. It contains the following material:

• An overview of FITS, with a one-paragraph description and a discussion of how FITS evolves
• Discussion of FITS documents, both those available from the FITS Support Office and those available elsewhere
• Discussion of software packages, including software for various platforms that can display FITS images
• Discussion of other FITS resources available on-line
• Discussion of the FITS Support Office with contact information

Where possible, links are provided to the documents, software, and network locations described. There is also a plain text version, available at the ftp site. It provides URLs or other access information for the material described.

The FITS Support Office maintains the official current IAUFWG list of registered extensions, as its agent. This list is available in both hypertext and plain text forms.

The FITS Support Office documentation discussed in section 6.1.2 and the software and test files described in section 6.1.3 are available from the Web page or at the ftp site.