Hi All -
On Mon, 23 Oct 2006, Pedro Osuna wrote:
> it was me who proposed the photometry thing.
>
> It is astronomers who like to do this "strange" things Doug, like liking
> to share data in magnitudes rather than real fluxes. I can give you many
> examples of those cases (whether "sensible" thing to do or otherwise is
> another issue), but just have a look yourself at Vizier using the old
> UCD system to guess how many catalogues there are there with photometric
> points (for instance, Johnson J):
I can see that one might want to plot a spectrum in magnitude units in a standard system. A good question to consider however, is whether this feature belongs in the user interface, where the spectrum is plotted in whatever units the user prefers, or in the protocol. This is similar to displaying RA/DEC in sexagesimal units, while we use decimal degrees in the protocol. This sort of conversion is easily handled in the user interface.