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IPAC Table Upload Format

This document presents an example to illustrate the following IPAC table formatting rules:

1. Table Keywords and Comment lines

Keywords follow the FITS keyword=value model. The keyword names start with "\" followed by 8 characters, followed by an equals sign ("="), followed by the value. "\" followed by a space is treated as comment line. The comment line should have no more than 80 characters.

2. Header lines:

Column names

Line one contains column names which begins and ends with bars ("|") and separated by bars ("|").

Datatypes, units, and null values

These three lines are optional, and may be left out. When present, their values are separated by "|" which must aligned with the bars in column name line. The datype line contains variable types (real, double, int, char), the unit line contains the unit of the variables, and the null value line contains the value of the variable when the data is missing.

3. No tabs are allowed

4. Data lines are fixed length, same length as the header lines.

5. No blank at the end of table

Example: 

| objname |  ra         |  dec        | csys | equinox | size |
           13h29m52.37s  +47d11m40.8s   
  M51                                                    5.0  
  M109                                                   5.0  
  M101     -125.0        -89.0          equ    j2000     3.0