ROTSE-III File Naming Conventions

In order to convey useful information about ROTSE-III files at a glance, as well as to avoid the danger of overwriting important files, we have implemented a standardized naming convention for all files in the data analysis pipeline. These files are usually FITS format, and thus take the .fit extension at the end of the file name. The name itself is broken into four parts, separated by underscore symbols:

[date]_[tla][id numbers]_[instrument designation][index number]_[optional modifier].fit

The date is straightforward: a six-digit representation of the year, month, and day in that order: YYMMDD. The other parts will be explained in the following sections, along with the standardized file system structure for where they are located.