sexagesimal

[Sebastien Derriere]

Alberto Micol wrote:
> 
> Help: I thought the ucd for the target name was under the obs. tree,
>        but I cannot find it. What is it?
>        In the old days was: ID_TARGET, but now? Was it removed?

  Hello,

  The UCD for the target name is simply meta.id
(meta.id;src if you want to be very precise).
(see the tools: http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/UCD/tools.htx )


> > Other heuristics that could be used....
> >   If a number is signed and it is not the first field, it must be
> > the start
> > of the second coordinate.
> 
> One way would be to enforce the sign for the second coordinate as a
> recognised separator, but please...

  Indeed, the sign can be a very useful separator between the
two coordinate components. I think we should encourage the use of
+/- in any recommended format.
  Interestingly enough, for earth geography, the ISO 6709 standard
requires the sign for both longitude and latitude:
http://www.anoca.org/ddd/altitude/iso_6709.html
  But there is NO other separator... quite different from common use
in astronomy, so I'm not pretending this is the way to go for IVOA.

Sebastien.

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