bandpasses in RM

From: Robert Hanisch <hanisch-at-stsci.edu>
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 11:22:36 -0500


I am starting to make the updates to the RM document brought about by the RFC and there is the matter of bandpass names, which we were urged to standardize and make consistent. I remind you that now we have the following eight bandpasses as allowed values for Coverage.Spectra:

  Radio
  Millimeter
  Infrared
  Optical
  UV
  EUV
  X-ray
  Gamma-ray

We have two names that are acronyms and the others not, and it does seem would should be self-consistent.

How would people feel about consolidating to seven named regions, all spelled-out?

  Radio
  Millimeter
  Infrared
  Optical
  Ultraviolet
  X-ray
  Gamma-ray

Ultraviolet would "consume" EUV. My reasoning is 1) These are broad definitions at this level; further specificity is provided by Coverage.Spectral.Bandpass and the central, minimum, and maximum wavelength elements.
2) EUV is infrequently observed; only a handful of resources would characterize themselves as specific to EUV and could still be easily found with Spectral.Coverage = UV plus other constraints.

We could also include EUV spelled-out,

  Extreme-Ultraviolet
or
  Extreme Ultraviolet

but for reasons mentioned above it seems simpler to me to leave it out.

Thanks,
Bob Received on 2004-03-22Z17:23:40