FITS
Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) is a digital file format used to store, transmit, and manipulate scientific and other images. FITS is the most commonly used digital file format in astronomy. Unlike many image formats, FITS is designed specifically for scientific data and hence includes many provisions for describing photometric and spatial calibration information, together with image origin metadata.
The FITS format was first standardized in 1981; it has evolved gradually since then, and the most recent version (3.0) was standardized in 2008. FITS was designed with an eye towards long-term archival storage, and the maxim once FITS, always FITS represents the requirement that developments to the format must be backwards compatible.
A major feature of the FITS format is that image metadata is stored in a human-readable ASCII header, so that an interested user can examine the headers to investigate a file of unknown provenance. The information in the header is designed to calculate the byte offset of some information in the subsequent data unit to support direct access to the data cells. Each FITS file consists of one or more headers containing ASCII card images (80 character fixed-length strings) that carry keyword/value pairs, interleaved between data blocks. The keyword/value pairs provide information such as size, origin, coordinates, binary data format, free-form comments, history of the data, and anything else the creator desires: while many keywords are reserved for FITS use, the standard allows arbitrary use of the rest of the name-space.
FITS is also often used to store non-image data, such as spectra, photon lists, data cubes, or even structured data such as multi-table databases. A FITS file may contain several extensions, and each of these may contain a data object. For example, it is possible to store x-ray and infrared exposures in the same file.
Read more about FITS: Images, Tables, Using FITS Files, Current Status
Famous quotes containing the word fits:
“During these fits of absolute unconsciousness I drank, God only knows how often or how much. As a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to the drink rather than the drink to the insanity. I had indeed, nearly abandoned all hope of a permanent cure when I found one in the death of my wife.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“Another appealing aspect to having grandparents is that they do help, to give [your child] a sense of continuity—of his place in the world and in the generations. Not only do grandparents help him intellectually to comprehend that there are parents of parents, but they also aid him in understanding where he fits in the succession of things. Even a very young child can begin to feel a sense of rootedness and history.”
—Lawrence Balter (20th century)
“Don’t you think he fits my shoes very well, your ladyship?”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)