The idea of a common data format for optical and infrared interferometry arose through discussions at the June 2000 NSF-sponsored meeting in Socorro. Since 2001, Tom Pauls and John Young have been responsible, under the auspices of the IAU (and encouraged by Peter Lawson), for coordinating discussion on this topic, and for producing and maintaining the specification document for a FITS-based format.
Preliminary drafts of the format specification were discussed by the community at the 198th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in June 2001, and the IAU Working Group Meeting in August 2001. The discussion continued by email amongst various interested parties, and the document was revised.
A public pre-release of the format specification and accompanying C code was made in March 2002, followed by a second pre-release of the document in April 2002. This draft was discussed at the August 2002 IAU Working Group Meeting. Comments were presented by participants from the European Southern Observatory and the Interferometry Science Center at Caltech. Since the IAU WG meeting there were two further pre-releases of the format specification, prior to the first 'production' release.
The standard was frozen on 7 April 2003 (release 5 of the format specification). The revision numbers of all tables are currently equal to one. Future changes to the format specification will require increments of the revision numbers for the changed tables.
We hope that the format will continue to develop, in order to better serve the needs of the community. Discussion of future enhancements should be addressed to the oi-data list server at oi-data@rsd.nrl.navy.mil.
Here are links to:
JSY and TP would especially like to thank Bill Cotton, John Monnier, and David Buscher for their contributions. Thanks also to the many people who have commented on the various drafts of the format specification.