HST Data Handbook for WFPC2

2.1 Historical Perspective

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In the early 1980's, when GEIS was selected as the standard format for HST data files, it held several advantages over both FITS and the original IRAF format (OIF):

• GEIS allows floating-point data. The early incarnations of FITS accommodated only integer data, and this restriction to integers would have made data reduction and storage of calibrated data rather cumbersome.
• GEIS files can hold multiple images, each with associated parameters. This feature allowed the packaging of images from the four WF/PC-1 chips into a single unit, as well as the packaging of multiple FOS or GHRS readouts into single files. OIF files and early FITS files could contain only single images.
• GEIS data are stored in two parts, an ASCII header and a binary data file. The separation of these two pieces and the restriction of the header to ASCII made these headers easier to read and print in the days when computers were less powerful and tasks for reading header information were less numerous. OIF headers combine ASCII and binary information, and FITS headers come packaged with the data in a single file.

GEIS was also the standard format for archiving and distribution of HST data until September 1994, when the Space Telescope Data Archive and Distribution Service (ST-DADS) came online. This new system stores and distributes HST data files in machine-independent FITS format, but observers with FOC, FOS, FGS, GHRS, HSP, WF/PC-1, and WFPC2 still must convert their files to machine-dependent GEIS format as described in section 2.3.1 before using IRAF/STSDAS software (see chapter 3 in the HST Introduction) to reduce their data.

Since the selection of GEIS as HST's standard data format, FITS has added features that have dramatically increased its flexibility. In particular, FITS files can now contain multiple image extensions, each with its own header, size, and datatype, that allow multiple exposures to be packaged into the same file, along with associated error and data quality information. The FITS image kernel in IRAF version 2.11, released in August 1997, enables users to access FITS image extensions in ways similar to how they would access GEIS data groups.

Because of these advantages, FITS was chosen as the standard reduction and analysis format for STIS and NICMOS. The STSDAS tasks written for these instruments expect FITS files as input and produce FITS files as output. You cannot convert STIS and NICMOS files to GEIS format. Observers using these instruments should therefore read the following section, which explains how to work with these new FITS files.