This document describes the Multi-Order Coverage map method (MOC) to specify arbitrary coverages for sky regions and/or time coverages and potentially other dimensions. The goal is to be able to provide a very fast comparison mechanism between coverages. The mechanism is based on a discretization of space and time dimensions. The system is based on the definition of a specific storage of the map coverage using predefined cells hierarchically grouped which makes it easy to produce and use for exploring astronomical collections. There are already a few applications and libraries which are taking advantage of this new standard.

The current IVOA Recommendation is REC-2.0. Prior versions are available on the IVOA Documents page.

Changes to this document are made via pull requests to the master branch of this repository. A PDF preview of the latest master version is available by clicking the badge on top.

When cloning your fork of this repository, use --recurse-submodules to include its submodules.

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/[your github user]/MOC.git

Then: run "make" and hope you have all the necessary tools installed.

More more information, see the ivoatex README and the IVOA note IVOATeX Document Preparation System.