SAOimage and FITS

[Mike Fitzpatrick]

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

> 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.
	
	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