[fitsbits] Version 1.0 of the nom.tam Java FITS library released

I have just released a new version of the nom.tam FITS library at
http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/he...its/java/v1.0/
This version has one significant change: support for .Z compressed
images. I've decided that supporting this commonly used format
was a big enough change to push the library to V1.0!

Note the slight change in the location (v1.0 versus v0.9) from earlier
releases. Please let me know if you have any issues or problems.

Regards,
Tom McGlynn

Release 1.0

- The major change to this release is support for .Z compressed images
(at least on Unix platforms).
This is implemented by invoking the uncompress command from
within the Java code. Uncompress must be in the user's execution
path.
- There is much more dynamic checking of the magic number of inputs
to determine whether the input to the FITS constructor is compressed
or not, and if compressed what the compression type is.
The user can still confuse the program if they specify an
incorrect value for the compression flag but in many cases it will
get the compression right regardless of what the user specifies.
Future versions may completely ignore the user specified compression
flag though it will be left in for compatibility.
- A new CompressTester class tests reading both types of
compressed files and also does a test of all of the non-trivial
constructors for Fits objects.
- Handling of string inputs to the Fits constructor is changed so that
instead of looking for a specific set of scheme prefixes, a string
is first tried out as a URL and then as a file.
- Bug fix to BinaryTable by A. Kovacs

Originally Posted by Tom McGlynn

I have just released a new version of the nom.tam FITS library at
http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/he...its/java/v1.0/
This version has one significant change: support for .Z compressed
images. I've decided that supporting this commonly used format
was a big enough change to push the library to V1.0!

Note the slight change in the location (v1.0 versus v0.9) from earlier
releases. Please let me know if you have any issues or problems.

Regards,
Tom McGlynn

I've been using nom.tam.fits package for quite awhile with great results. However for a recent application am I am trying to open fits image files that , were created by the CCDOPS software from SBIG.

When I open the fits file with the following call:

Fits fits = new Fits(fitsFileName);
ImageHDU hdu = (ImageHDU) fits.readHDU();

I am getting the exception

nom.tam.fits.PaddingException: Error skipping padding after image
at nom.tam.fits.ImageData.read(ImageData.java:273)
at nom.tam.fits.Fits.readHDU(Fits.java:602)

This call has worked in the past for me on every image file I have come across except for the files from SBIG.

I can open the file in other fits image viewers such as DS9 but the nom.tam.fits package throws the padding exception.

Any thoughts?