Working with FITS Format
FITS is a digital data format developed for storing and transporting astronomical data in form of images and tables. The acronym FITS stands for "Flexible Image Transport System", which was developed in the 1970's at Kitt Peak National Observatory and was standardized in 1981. It has been maintained by NASA for more than 2 decades. A FITS format file consists of one of more Header-Data Units, with each "HDU" consisting of an ASCII text "header" containing metadata, followed by a multi-dimensional array that may contain pixel data for an image, or table data in the form of ASCII text or binary data. The FITS header and data array adhere to a rigid structure defined in the standard. It is critical to note that FITS is a data format, not an image format, as it was originally designed to hold one HDU of image data. It was later extended to hold multiple HDUs which may also hold table data. Mira provides numerous tools for working directly with the header and data as listed below. Commands for working directly with FITS data are described below. Also see the FITS Format Overview.
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Defines and describes the FITS format and Mira's implementation. |
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Defines the standard FITS keywords and additional keywords used by Mira. |
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Opens one or more FITS files, where each file may contain one or more HDUs. |
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Saves the Image Set from an Image Window to a FITS file containing 'IMAGE' type extensions. |
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Defines the coordinate orientation used by FITS format images. |
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Lists Keywords that are updated by commands that change the spatial scale of the image. |
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Describes the general procedure for editing or modifying the FITS header information. |
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Displays the FITS header information and permits the information to be edited. The header is opened in an independent window, separate from the image window. |
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Displays the FITS header information and permits the information to be edited. The header is opened in a docking pane owned by the image window. |
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Displays the FITS header and permits text searching, opening in Excel, and copying to a Text Editor window. |
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List FITS File Header |
OBSOLETE. This has been replaced by the View and Search FITS Header command. |
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Describes how comments are stored in the FITS image header. |
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Describes how the image processing history is stored in the FITS image header. |
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Displays the keywords and values resulting from Statistics Measurements. |
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Displays the keywords used for describing a World Coordinate System attached to the image. |
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Changes keyword values in the FITS image header. |
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Changes (adds, replaces, and renames) keyword metadata when the image is opened or is saved to a FITS format file. This command configures the metadata changes but the changes are actually committed based on global settings in the General Properties (Ctrl+R) dialog. |
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Creates a table of keyword values in a collection of images. |
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Creates a table of keyword values meeting numerical criteria in a collection of images. |
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Encodes calibration information into the image header. Mira uses this to prevent repeating the specific steps of calibration. |
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