The FITS Support Office contains up to date information on FITS documentation, keyword sets, software and publications.
Other useful sites are the NASA HEASARC NASA HEASARCand the NRAO FITS
The formal definition of the FITS standard is given by the NASA/Science Office of Standards and Technology and published as NOST Document 100-2.0. FITS standard 1999 or locally PDF. This was published in A&A in 2001 ( pdf)
For those new to FITS - the FITS primer ( local) contains an outline of the FITS format. The FITS users guide ( postscript) is an introduction to the history and usage of FITS (Last updated in April 1997).
Binary table definition or local file ps
A collection of FITS format recommendations has been made by HEASARC HEASARC FITS Format recommendations
NASA FITS WCS web-site - links to WCS papers, software and further information
The WCS conventions are described in a series of four papers. The first two papers have been published as
Paper 1. "Representations of World Coordinates in FITS", Greisen, E. W., and Calabretta, M. R., Astronomy & Astrophysics, 395, 1061-1075, 2002.( pdf, ps)
Paper II. "Representations of celestial coordinates in FITS" Calabretta, M. R., and Greisen, E. W., Astronomy & Astrophysics, 395, 1077-1122, 2002.( pdf, ps)
The CFITSIO library of C subroutines for reading and writing FITS files is installed on bootes.
The software can be downloaded from FITSIO home page. The latest version is 2.440
A C programmers reference guide to CFITSIO is available.
FITS files can be viewed and edited with fv The Interactive FITS File Editor. The latest version (November 2002) is Fv3.2
HEASARC has produced a large package of FTOOLSto analyse and manipulate FITS data (particularly that from high energy missions).
I have installed some of these utilities onto bootes.