Subject: SAOimage and FITS

From: Saleem Mukhtar <saleem at aig.jpl.nasa.gov>
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 16:43:09 -0700

Hello,

I do not know anything about FITS and find the material on the web just
to verbose.

I want to convert an array of intergers to FITS format and vice versa.
Please could someone help me. I would like to use C.

I want to write a few "analysis" routines for SAOimage which output an
image. Anybody tried this. If so, please could I take a look at your
code.

Thanks,

Saleem

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From: William Pence <pence at tetra.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 14:24:35 -0400

> Please could someone help me. I would like to use C.

The CFITSIO package contains a set of relatively simple to use routines
written in ANSI C for reading or writing FITS files. It is available on the
Web at http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/fitsio/fitsio.html or
by anonymous ftp from legacy.gsfc.nasa.gov in the directory
software/fitsio/c.

This is still labeled as a 'beta' release, but it has been fully tested
and is fully functional.  This version will probably become the first
full release within a couple weeks.

Refer to the CFITSIO User's Guide for full details on building and
using this C library.  In particular refer to 'Basic Interface' chapter
that describes the 16 basic routines that can perform most FITS file
operations.  There is also a sample program called cookbook.c that
contains simple examples of how to use CFITSIO.

-Bill Pence
 HEASARC/GSFC/NASA

---

From: fitz at noao.edu (Mike Fitzpatrick)
Date: 19 Jun 1996 15:54:01 -0700

>From article <31C5ED8D.3A70 at aig.jpl.nasa.gov>, by Saleem Mukhtar <saleem at aig.jpl.nasa.gov>:

> image. Anybody tried this. If so, please could I take a look at your code.
	
	If your only intention for writing FITS is to input it to SAOimage,
you should know that SAOimage can handle raw binary as well.  For instance,
to display a raw binary file of long integers of 256x256 pixels try

	% saoimage -i4 256 256 file.raw

Header info can also be skipped if needed along with other options.  For
more info see the SAOimage man page and User's Guide (available at

	ftp://iraf.noao.edu/contrib/saoimage.ps.Z
	ftp://iraf.noao.edu/contrib/saoman.ps.Z
	ftp://iraf.noao.edu/contrib/saodoc.tar.Z

FITS of course lets you move more easily to other packages....

Mike Fitzpatrick
NOAO/IRAF Group