unit

[Mark Taylor]

On Tue, 3 May 2011, Jaiwon Kim wrote:

> Dear all,
> 
> What is an 'ivoa standard' way of specifying unit in services implementing
> IVOA protocols? Should be 'meter' or 'm'?  'sec' or 's', 'day' or 'd'?, etc.
> 
> I thought that there has been some efforts on units in DM group.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Jaiwon

Jaiwon,

I believe there is a unit standardisation effort going on in the IVOA,
though it is work in progress.  In absence of a more authoritative
response from somebody involved with that effort, as far as I know
the closest thing to an answer to this based on an existing IVOA 
Recommendation is what's done in VOTable: see VOTable 1.2 section 4.4:

   http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/VOTable/20091130/REC-VOTable-1.2.html#ToC28

and reference [3] in that document:

   http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/doc/catstd-3.2.htx

Mark

--
Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-928-8776 http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/