Data Format Compatibility

The internal binary data formats of the VAX and SUN systems are different which makes it impossible to share data files (e.g. image or table). The SUN systems store data starting with the most significant bits (i.e. big endian) and use IEEE floating point format while VAX's are byte swapped and have a proprietary floating point format.

In order to exchange data files between these systems it is necessary to use a machine independent format e.g. FITS. For this reason and because internal MIDAS data structures may change, it is strongly recommended to save data in FITS format.

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