#SAOIMAGE DS9 STANDS FOR SOFTWARE#

One of the reasons it was created in the first place was for archival purposes. Guess what: camera raw files (CR2, NEF, etc.) are compressed! Booooo. But that’s not the only reason FITS files are cooler. Why do we use FITS instead of camera raw? The files are big, but the data is very accurate. The actual image pixel data itself is stored in a 1D, 2D, or 3D multi-dimensional array, and it isn’t compressed. Want to tell us what camera, temperature, wind speed, GPS coordinates, astronomical coordinates, height, weight, eye color, and middle name of the photographer, or virtually any other fact about the data contained there is to know? Done. One of the really cool things about FITS files is also the fact that there is an ASCII (human-readable) file header (the first few bytes of the file) that can contain pretty much whatever you want. Think of FITS as a document, a very accurate written description of an image or other data. SSystem: I think they added a fourth letter to make it a naughty word. TTransport: It’s a container for whatever you want, like image data. IImage: It’s for images…but not just for images. What does FITS stand for? (…other than truth and justice for all)įFlexible: FITS is stretchy, it does whatever you want it to do. FITS is not just an image format! Although, images are what is stored most often in these types of files, you can perceivably store anything you want in a FITS file. The current standard as of this article was defined and finalized in 2008, FITS version 3.0, and it’s used for all kinds of scientific data.

So, let’s talk about FITS, baby. Why do we use it, and how can you convert it to something your normal image processing application can understand? I’m in a funny mood while writing this, I hope it makes a dry topic a little more entertaining.

#SAOIMAGE DS9 STANDS FOR SOFTWARE#

It’s also not natively readable by the most common photo editing software suites, which seems like a problem to the beginner, and a bit annoying for advanced astrophotographers. The FITS file format is the most commonly used file format for astronomical data (astro photos!). Let’s demystify an image format that gives you fits.

Saoimage ds9 stands for