FITS on the web

[Thomas A. McGlynn]

Paul Borlin wrote:
> 
> I have recently created a web page containing all the images our school has
> created.  The images are in several formats including FITS.  I have
> experience one problem.  All the browsers I have used want to load FITS
> (and ST6) files directly into the viewing window instead of downloading
> them.  The only thing I have been able to do to resolve this is to compress
> them, and I don't want to do that.  I've noticed that most FITS achives
> don't.  How do I get around this problem?
> 
> Paul Borlin
> Student at Western Washington University


This generally depends upon how you've set up the Mime types
on the server.  If you are indicating that the data is some
type that browsers interpret as an image, then when they download
the image they will grab an image.  Most likely you haven't specified
anything and the output is being treated as text and dumped
on the browser's screen.  Note that most browsers do have a
facility to grab something to disk even when it might normally
be displayed (e.g. on Netscape use a Right button click and then
use the Save Link option).

If you set up the Mime types such that the FITS files are designated
as an Octet-stream or some such, then most browsers will link onto
local disk immediately.  So look in your mime.types file...

Hope this helps,

		Tom McGlynn
		tam at silk.gsfc.nasa.gov