FITS - Using FITS Files

Using FITS Files

FITS support is available in a variety of programming languages that are used for scientific work, including C, C++, C#, Fortran, IGOR Pro, IDL, Java, LabVIEW, Mathematica, MatLab, Perl, PDL, Python, R, and Tcl. The FITS Support Office at NASA/GSFC maintains a list of libraries and platforms that currently support FITS.

Image processing programs such as GIMP, Photoshop, XnView and IrfanView can generally read simple FITS images, but frequently cannot interpret more complex tables and databases. Scientific teams frequently write their own code to interact with their FITS data, using the tools available in their language of choice. The FITS Liberator software is used by imaging scientists at the European Space Agency, the European Southern Observatory and NASA. The SAOImage DS9 Astronomical Data Visualization Application is available for many OSs, and handles images and headers.

Many scientific computing environments make use of the coordinate system data in the FITS header to display, compare, rectify, or otherwise manipulate FITS images. Examples are the coordinate transform library included with PDL, the PLOT MAP library in the Solarsoft solar-physics-related software tree, the Starlink Project AST library in C, and the PyFITS package in Python.