[fitsbits] Question(s) regarding development of proprietary FITS manipulation software. . .

[Michael Williams]

Maren,

I understand that.  But many of the sample FITS files we've been  
given have ASCII data in a header, then literally an accompanying  
"picture"; unless, of course, it's simply a matter of the programs  
we're using automatically interpreting the "picture".  Is this  
incorrect?  Our concern is how to properly display the "picture" and  
what relationship it has to other "picture" formats.

If it's not a picture, then what is it *exactly*?  Simple plots of  
data?  How is it to be interpreted?  We've got a TON of data  
regarding what FITS is supposed to be, but nothing regarding the  
actual interpreting of data.

Any suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Michael



On Aug 20, 2007, at 5:49 PM, Maren Purves wrote:

> Michael,
>
> it's not graphics, it's data.
> Well described reducible data.
> You can't get much physics out of just images.
>
> Aloha,
> Maren
>
> gberz3 wrote:
>> Thanks Maren.  One question I suppose I've just forgotten to ask:  Is
>> there anything particularly special about the actual graphics content
>> of a FITS file?  Or is it perhaps simply a glorified TIFF or JPEG of
>> some sort?
>> Regards,
>> Michael
>> On Aug 4, 11:09 pm, Maren Purves <m.pur... at jach.hawaii.edu> wrote:
>>> On Fri, 3 Aug 2007, gberz3 wrote:
>>>> So far, I've really only looked at the CFITSIO items and it's very
>>>> well documented (really too well) but the function names don't seem
>>>> very intuitive.  I'm sure they mean a lot more to someone familiar
>>>> with FITS, but I'm absolutely not.  It's basically like someone in
>>>> 1989 asking you to write a JPEG file manipulation program.  Sure  
>>>> the
>>>> information exists, but with 0 familiarity you'll need a lot of  
>>>> input.
>>> there used to be a file called longnames.h ...