Viewing .fts flies

I've got a load of .fts files (from the SOHO archive) that I need to
study, but I'm having trouble finding a viewer that will open them.
When I searched for .fts programs online, it always gave me .fits
programs- is this right? Are they the same? I've been trying to use a
program called ds9, but to no avail. It might just be me doing
something silly, but can anyone point mein the right direction? Thanks!

wrote:
I've got a load of .fts files (from the SOHO archive) that I need to
study, but I'm having trouble finding a viewer that will open them.
When I searched for .fts programs online, it always gave me .fits
programs- is this right? Are they the same? I've been trying to use a
program called ds9, but to no avail. It might just be me doing
something silly, but can anyone point mein the right direction?
Thanks!

Hi,

You can for example try mine
http://arnholm.org/astro/software/ImageTOOLSca/

The extensions .fts, .fit or .fits are normally not significant


--
Carsten A. Arnholm
http://arnholm.org/
N59.776 E10.457

wrote:

I've got a load of .fts files (from the SOHO archive) that I need to
study, but I'm having trouble finding a viewer that will open them.
When I searched for .fts programs online, it always gave me .fits
programs- is this right? Are they the same? I've been trying to use a
program called ds9, but to no avail. It might just be me doing
something silly, but can anyone point mein the right direction? Thanks!

I was just going to recommend Arnholm's viewer and here he is.
I can recommend his viewer highly for its versatility. Thanks -
Jerry

On Mon, 5 Mar 2007 wrote:

I've got a load of .fts files (from the SOHO archive) that I need to

Are they really FITS or something else ? Are they solar data ?
Are they FITS images or binary tables ?

programs- is this right? Are they the same? I've been trying to use a
program called ds9, but to no avail.

ds9 is a FITS image viewer, extensively used at least in the high energy
astrophysics community. What kind of problems do you have with it ?

If your files are not images, ds9 is not the tool for you. fv can be
used to view FITS (binary) tables (and can also display images and view
headers).

I have no idea about solar images, and their WCS compliance, but I guess
ds9 will open an image in image pixels if there is no valid WCS (it does
if there is no WCS at all).

I generally use an extremely lightweight shell script (fitshead by
Steve Allen of lick.ucsc.edu) for quick inspection of a FITS file.
Namely I use "fitshead -x file | more" and then I can easily smell what
the file (plain image, binary table, other extension). Ask if you need
any clue.

FITS files start with "SIMPLE = T" in their first
80 bytes. If your .fts file has not such keyword, it is not FITS.

The rest of the keywords in the ASCII header allows to tell what the
file is. That's rather easy if one knows where his towel is. But as a
rule of thumb, if it has NAXIS not zero (usually 2) it is an image (or
at least contains an image in the primary HDU). If it has NAXIS=0 and
EXTEND=T the primary HDU is empty, and extension HDU follows (which can
be a binary table, or ascii table or even an image extension).

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The SOHO project tended to use the convention where the .fts extension was used
for simple FITS image files, while .fits was used for more complicated FITS
files such as binary tables.

You may need to tell ds9 to turn off WCS. It may be getting confused by the
fact that solar images are scaled in arc seconds instead of degrees.

Bill Thompson


wrote:
I've got a load of .fts files (from the SOHO archive) that I need to
study, but I'm having trouble finding a viewer that will open them.
When I searched for .fts programs online, it always gave me .fits
programs- is this right? Are they the same? I've been trying to use a
program called ds9, but to no avail. It might just be me doing
something silly, but can anyone point mein the right direction? Thanks!

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--
William Thompson
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Code 671
Greenbelt, MD 20771
USA

301-286-2040

On Mar 6, 2007, at 9:14 AM, LC's NoSpam Newsreading account wrote:

I generally use an extremely lightweight shell script (fitshead by
Steve Allen of lick.ucsc.edu) for quick inspection of a FITS file.

You can also view the primary header using "less" in an 80 column
window.

FITS files start with "SIMPLE = T"

I've attached a "magic" file to use with the Unix "file" command. If
this doesn't make it through the mailing list, it's a one line file
(tab separated fields, whitespace between "=" and "T" is significant):

0 string SIMPLE = T THIS_IS_FITS

Rob Seaman
NOAO
-----

On Wed, 7 Mar 2007, Rob Seaman wrote:
On Mar 6, 2007, at 9:14 AM, LC's NoSpam Newsreading account wrote:

I generally use an extremely lightweight shell script (fitshead by
Steve Allen of lick.ucsc.edu) for quick inspection of a FITS file.

You can also view the primary header using "less" in an 80 column window.

It helps if you make your window 80 columns wide ...
(and in our files, which aren't FITS, the header is at the end,
so I tend to use "tail -1 filename |less")

Maren