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The FITS Support Office
at NASA/GSFC
What is FITS?
- The standard data format used in astronomy
- Stands for 'Flexible Image Transport System'
- Endorsed by NASA and the International Astronomical Union
- Much more than just another image format (such as JPEG or GIF)
- Used for the transport, analysis, and archival storage of scientific data sets
- Multi-dimensional arrays: 1D spectra, 2D images, 3D+ data cubes
- Tables containing rows and columns of information
- Header keywords provide descriptive information about the data
- See also the descriptions on the Wikipedia and Library of Congress Web sites.
News
- [28-July-2016] The IAU FITS Working Group issued a draft of a new version of the FITS Standard document that includes a description of eight new features that have been officially added to the FITS format since the publication of the previous version. This includes World Coordinate keywords for the definition of time coordinates, support for long string keyword values that are continued over multiple keyword records, file checksum keywords, and standards for data compression of images and tables. If you would like to participate in future discussions about possible other new enhancements to the FITS format please subscribe to the fitsbits email exploder.
- [2015] The Vatican Library has adopted the FITS data format for the long-term digital preservation of the books, manuscripts, and other objects in its vast collection. An overview of some of the technical details of this ambitious project is availble on the Vatican Library Web site.
Information about FITS
- News: current FITS activities and issues
- Documentation: user's guides, definition documents and other FITS papers
- World Coordinate System (WCS) documents and software
- Sample FITS files
- FITS I/O libraries to read and write FITS files from various computer languages
- FITS image viewers and image format converters
- General FITS Utility software including a FITS conformance verifier
- FITS keyword data dictionaries which define existing keyword usage
- FITS conventions used within the FITS community.
- Other FITS resources - newsgroups, web sites, and the IAU FITS Working Group
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Last revised: Friday, 29-Jul-2016 14:10:10 EDT
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