Introduction

The highly successful Ginga X-ray mission was developed in a Japanese/British collaboration under the leadership of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) in Japan. The main Large Area proportional Counter (LAC) detector had a collecting area of approximately 4000 cm² and operated for almost 5 years producing approximately 40 GB of data. The data are, however, stored in a highly non-standard format known as FRF (first reduction file) which closely parallels the telemetry stream from the satellite. This seriously hinders the accessibility of these data to the majority of astronomers. We are therefore undertaking a project to convert these data from the FRF format to FITS. The intention is to thereby enable the data to be analyzed using a variety of existing software such as XANADU, IDL, and PROS.

The FITS converter is based on software developed at Leicester University known as "sortac". The details of the FITS formats to be used are still being debated but will be based on existing formats such as the ASCA GIS MPC mode in order to simply the task of analyzing data using existing software. The FITS conversion software is being developed in close collaboration with the HEASARC at the Goddard Space Flight Center which will be responsible for archiving the FITS files and making these data accessible to the astronomical community. In parallel with the data reformatting project, a database of software products (light curves and spectra) is being produced at Leicester University which will also be made widely available.