Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1999 18:58:41 -0700
From: amanda@lowell.Lowell.Edu (Amanda S. Bosh)
To: showalter@ringside.arc.nasa.gov
Subject: RPX CDs

Comments/questions on distributed RPX CDs:
I looked through these CDs on a Mac Powerbook G3 only.  In general the
documentation is good, as I wrote down about 10 questions and later crossed
them off as I found the answers while looking through the documentation.
I didn't compare individual data values or anything like that.  Here are
some questions that remain.

--Amanda

General
  Why do data folder names end in XX?  Is it to pad out to some standard
    length?

  What is the justification for releasing just HST/WFPC2?  I can see that
    HST would be much simpler than various ground-based data sets because
    it is auto-archived.  But why the constraint to WFPC2?  There are some
    HRS and FOS data as well that are intimately tied to the RPX timing.

  What does "^" mean at the beginning of a header line?  Is it a new FITS
    thing?

  It would be nice if the DOCUMENT/TUTORIAL.TXT could be moved somewhat
    higher to make it easier to find.

CATALOG/MISSION.CAT
  The mission statement describes satellite mutual events, but for the most
    part they are not included in this cd distribution.  Some were observed
    during the HST campaigns, but as I recall, no observations were
    specifically targeted to them.

LABEL/EXTTAB.FMT
  Is there a way to indicate somewhere that we have found that some header
    keyword values are not correct.  I think ORIENTAT is one of them.  It
    would be a shame to make others go through this exercise when we already
    know it.

RPX_000n:1995nnXX/whatever/CALIMAGE/*.LBL
  SC_TARGET_POSITION_VECTOR:  the TUTORIAL.TXT says that these are actually
    geocentric.  Is this information included anywhere else closer to the
    data files (people may not read or remember the tutorial).  The keyword
    is confusing given the definition of the value provided.  It would be
    better to either change the keyword to be accurate, or to include the
    spacecraft ephemeris.  The definitive ephemerides are easy to get and
    use (I have a tutorial if you need one).
  CELESTIAL_NORTH_CLOCK_ANGLE:  is this from the header keywords?  If so, it
    may not be correct.  Why not just call it position angle?
  BODY_POLE_CLOCK_ANGLE:  does this include pole precession, and if so, what
    reference.  Either way, what is the reference for the pole position?

RPX_000n:1995nnXX/whatever/CALIMAGE/*.IMG
  Just a note:  I was unable to get these files to open with GraphicConverter
    unless I first unchecked "Detect only clear Formats" in Preferences:Open,
    otherwise it thought it was a different type of file because of the
    suffix.  GraphicConverter is used to seeing *.fits if it's a FITS file,
    I guess.  [Mac PBG3]

RPX_000n:1995nnXX/whatever/RAWIMAGE/*.ZIP
  I unable to unzip this with the program Unzip (I grabbed the compiled one
    from the website rather than compile one using the files on the CD).
    Error message:  "cannot find either 010A_D0F.ZIP or 010A_DOF.ZIP.zip"
    It worked if I used StuffIt Expander.

RPX_0005:199511XX/U2ZYXXXX/
  Technically, A301 and A302 were Phil's, but we split an orbit so they
    assigned them to me.  It's not a hugely important thing, but if anyone
    cares we can move them over to Phil's directory.  Although they'll then
    be inconsistent between HST naming and this CD directory structure, so 
    it's probably better to leave them where they are.