spectral data

[Ivo Busko]

In response to Anita Richards:

> Regarding Ivo Busko's document on Generic Spectral Data Structures, I 
> guess this is just for handling certain types of data? as it does not seem 
> to cover the 3 or 4 D cases, e.g. datacubes, described by Frank Valdes. 
> This is not a criticism, as I am sure Specview is very good in its domain, 
> but it will not meet all the near future needs of the VO. 

Absolutely. The "generic" spectral data structures we conceived for the
Specview software address just the particular requirements of the software, 
and they cannot come even close to what a VO standard needs. As you pointed 
out, the extra dimensiosn (spatial and temporal) were left out entirely. This
is because they were not part of the requirements. 

The point of contact between Specview's data structures and a (much) more 
comprehensive VO standard would be, in my view, in the area of minimum
support. That is, what should minimally a VO standard support in terms of
spectral data ? The answer to this question would almost necessarily include
some, or most, of the elements we included in Specview's data structures, such
as physical units, extra data arrays besides the flux and wavelength ones,
data quality, etc. Such elements would in a sense be folded into the more generic
multi-dimensional structures.

-Ivo