Lawrence --

Just a note to say that FITS is most definitely a standard, and
widely used in the astronomical community. FITS files carry not
only the image but a varying amount of other information such as
the exposure start time, duration, arcsec/pixel, and sometimes
even a set of coordinates ("WCS") that make it possible to scale
RA/Dec right off the image to sub-arcsecond accuracy. The NASA
and NOAO FITS offices have links to FITS readers for WIndows. I
use FITSView 2.0 which supports the WCS stuff and 2-image
blinking. It's kind of ugly but it works well.

The astrometry package I use is Computer-Aided Astrometry by John
Rogers. See

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/johnrogers/

for more info. It is a real 32-bit Windows program (thus has no
DOS graphic video issues) and does much more than the astrometric
stuff. The Lowell observatory astorb database is presented in a
nice browser that lets you see the candidate MPs (not members of
parliament!) near opposition at the time, make really nice finder
charts and camera-field charts, compute and refine orbits, etc.
The disadvantage is that you must align the GSC or USNO star
references to the stars in the image by hand using a very klunky
interface, typing adjustment numbers into a box and clicking OK.
On balance it's really A-OK.

-- Bob

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