FITS

Specification

FITS stands for Flexible Image Transport System and is the standard astronomical data format used by professional scientists such as NASA. FITS is much more than an image format (such as JPG or TIFF) and is primarily designed to store scientific data consisting of multidimensional arrays.

A FITS file consists of one or more header and data units (HDUs), with the first HDU referred to as the "primary HDU" or "primary array." Five primary data types are supported: 8-bit unsigned bytes, 16 and 32-bit signed integers, and 32 and 64-bit single and double-precision floating-point reals. The FITS format can also store 16 and 32-bit unsigned integers.

Each header unit consists of any number of 80-character keyword records which have the general form:

KEYNAME = value / comment string

The keyword names may be up to 8 characters long and can only contain uppercase letters, the digits 0-9, the hyphen, and the underscore character. The keyword name is (usually) followed by an equals sign and a space character (= ) in columns 9 - 10 of the record, followed by the value of the keyword which may be either an integer, a floating point number, a character string (enclosed in single quotes), or a boolean value (the letter T or F).

The last keyword in the header is always the END keyword which has no value or comment fields.

Each header unit begins with a series of required keywords that specify the size and format of the following data unit. A 2-dimensional image primary array header, for example, begins with the following keywords:

SIMPLE  =                    T / file does conform to FITS standard
BITPIX  =                   16 / number of bits per data pixel
NAXIS   =                    2 / number of data axes
NAXIS1  =                  440 / length of data axis 1
NAXIS2  =                  300 / length of data axis 2

Note

In Siril, 64-bit FITS files are not supported. Siril reads them but converts them to 32-bit files.

Compression

Compression is the way to reduce the size of the image. There are many methods of compression depending on the type of images used. This compression can be destructive, as with the JPEG, or lossless as proposed by the PNG.

It is possible to work with compressed FITS files. At the cost of a longer calculation time, the size of the images can be reduced considerably. Siril offers several compression algorithms which are the following:

  • Rice: The Rice algorithm is simple and very fast

  • GZIP 1: The gzip algorithm is used to compress and uncompress the image pixels. Gzip is the compression algorithm used in the free GNU software utility of the same name.

  • GZIP 2: The bytes in the array of image pixel values are shuffled into decreasing order of significance before being compressed with the gzip algorithm. This is usually especially effective when compressing floating-point arrays.

One option is associated to these algorithms, the Quantization level:

While floating-point format images may be losslessly compressed (using gzip, since Rice only compresses integer arrays), these images often do not compress very well because the pixel values are too noisy; the less significant bits in the mantissa of the pixel values effectively contain incompressible random bit patterns. In order to achieve higher compression, one needs to remove some of this noise, but without losing the useful information content. If it is too large, one undersamples the pixel values resulting in a loss of information in the image. If it is too small, however, it preserves too much of the noise (or even amplifies the noise) in the pixel values, resulting in poor compression.

Note

The supported image compression algorithms are all loss-less when applied to integer FITS images; the pixel values are preserved exactly with no loss of information during the compression and uncompression process. Floating point FITS images (which have BITPIX = -32 or -64) are first quantized into scaled integer pixel values before being compressed. This technique produces much higher compression factors than simply using GZIP to compress the image, but it also means that the original floating value pixel values may not be precisely returned when the image is uncompressed. When done properly, this only discards the 'noise' from the floating point values without losing any significant information.

Orientation of FITS images

The FITS standard is a container that describes how to store image data and metadata. Professional tools, from the early age of the FITS format, like ds9 (Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), fv (FITS viewer from NASA), store images bottom-up. We might be tempted to say that it does not really matter, but when demosaicing or astrometry is involved, problems arise. For example, the usual RGGB Bayer pattern becomes GBRG if the image is upside-down.

Nowadays, despite this, most camera drivers are writing data in the top-down order and we have to cope with it.

For these reasons, we recently have introduced, together with P. Chevalley of CCDCiel, a new FITS keyword. We encourage all data producers, INDI and ASCOM developers, to use it in order to make things easier for everybody.

This keyword is ROWORDER of type TSTRING. It can take two values: BOTTOM-UP and TOP-DOWN.

Siril will always read and display images in the bottom-up order, however if the top-down information is specified in the keyword, then Siril will demosaic the image with the corrected pattern.

Why would some programs write images bottom-up in the first place?

The reason is: mathematics do it that way.

Also, the FITS specification says:

5.1. Image display conventions

It is very helpful to adopt a convention for the display of images transferred via the FITS format. Many of the current image processing systems have converged upon such a convention. Therefore, we recommend that FITS writers order the pixels so that the first pixel in the FITS file (for each image plane) be the one that would be displayed in the lower-left corner (with the first axis increasing to the right and the second axis increasing upwards) by the imaging system of the FITS writer. This convention is clearly helpful in the absence of a description of the world coordinates. It does not preclude a program from looking at the axis descriptions and overriding this convention, or preclude the user from requesting a different display. This convention also does not excuse FITS writers from providing complete and correct descriptions of the image coordinates, allowing the user to determine the meaning of the image. The ordering of the image for display is simply a convention of convenience, whereas the coordinates of the pixels are part of the physics of the observation.

Warning

ROWORDER keyword can be used for:

  1. Displaying the image with the intended orientation (unflip the display).

  2. Unflip the Bayer demosaic pattern. So the demosaic pattern can be specified conform the sensor supplier.

BUT

  1. ROWORDER shall not be used to unflip the image data for stacking. Otherwise new images would become incompatible with older darks and flats.

  2. ROWORDER shall not be used to unflip the image data for astrometric solving. This would make the astrometric solution incompatible with other programs.

Software using this keyword

Retrieving the Bayer matrix

Image row order changes the way the Bayer matrix should be read, but there are also two optional FITS header keywords that have an effect on this: XBAYROFF and YBAYROFF. They specify an offset to the Bayer matrix, to start reading it on first column or first row.

To help developers integrating the ROWORDER, XBAYROFF and YBAYROFF keywords in their software, some test images were created by Han Kleijn from hnsky.org, one for each combination of the three keywords. Download them here: Bayer_test_pattern_v6.tar.gz.

List of FITS keywords

Siril can read and interpret a wide range of keywords. The following list illustrates the non-standard keywords that Siril registers if necessary. Some keywords read by Siril may not appear in this list. For example, the keywords CCDTEMP or TEMPERAT, that indicate the temperature of the sensor, are correctly read, but are propagated under the keyword CCD-TEMP.

FITS keywords saved by Siril

FITS Keyword

Type

Comment

MIPS-HI

Unsigned short

Upper visualization cutoff

MIPS-LO

Unsigned short

Lower visualization cutoff

MIPS-FHI

Float

Upper visualization cutoff

MIPS-FLO

Float

Lower visualization cutoff

BZERO

Double

Offset data range to that of unsigned short

BSCALE

Double

Default scaling factor

ROWORDER

String

Order of the rows in image array

INSTRUME

String

Instrument name

TELESCOP

String

Telescope used to acquire this image

OBSERVER

String

Observer name

DATE

String

UTC date that FITS file was created

DATE-OBS

String

YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss observation start, UT

STACKCNT

Unsigned int

Stack frames

EXPTIME

Double

Single Frame exposure time [s]

LIVETIME

Double

Total exposure time [s]

EXPSTART

Double

Exposure start time (standard Julian date)

EXPEND

Double

Exposure end time (standard Julian date)

XPIXSZ

Float

X pixel size microns

YPIXSZ

Float

Y pixel size microns

XBINNING

Unsigned int

Camera binning mode

YBINNING

Unsigned int

Camera binning mode

FOCALLEN

Double

Camera focal length

CCD-TEMP

Double

CCD temp in C

SET-TEMP

Double

Temperature setting in C

FILTER

String

Active filter name

IMAGETYP

String

Type of image

OBJECT

String

Name of the object of interest

APERTURE

Double

Aperture of the instrument

ISOSPEED

Double

ISO camera setting

BAYERPAT

String

Bayer color pattern

XBAYROFF

Int

X offset of Bayer array

YBAYROFF

Int

Y offset of Bayer array

GAIN

Unsigned short

Camera gain

OFFSET

Unsigned short

Camera offset

CVF

Double

Conversion factor (e-/adu)

AIRMASS

Double

Airmass

SITELAT

Double

[deg] Observation site latitude

SITELONG

Double

[deg] Observation site longitude

SITEELEV

Double

[m] Observation site elevation

DFTTYPE

String

Module/Phase of a Discrete Fourier Transform

DFTORD

String

Low/high spatial freq. are located at image center

DFTNORMX

String

Normalisation value for channel #X

PROGRAM

String

Software that created this HDU

CTYPE1

String

Coordinate type for the first axis

CTYPE2

String

Coordinate type for the second axis

CUNIT1

String

Unit of coordinates

CUNIT2

String

Unit of coordinates

EQUINOX

Double

Equatorial equinox

CTYPE3

String

RGB image

OBJCTRA

String

Image center Right Ascension (hms)

OBJCTDEC

String

Image center Declination (dms)

RA

Double

Image center Right Ascension (deg)

DEC

Double

Image center Declination (deg)

CRPIX1

Double

Axis1 reference pixel

CRPIX2

Double

Axis2 reference pixel

CRVAL1

Double

Axis1 reference value (deg)

CRVAL2

Double

Axis2 reference value (deg)

CDELT1

Double

X pixel size (deg)

CDELT2

Double

Y pixel size (deg)

PC1_1

Double

Linear transformation matrix (1, 1)

PC1_2

Double

Linear transformation matrix (1, 2)

PC2_1

Double

Linear transformation matrix (2, 1)

PC2_2

Double

Linear transformation matrix (2, 2)

CD1_1

Double

Scale matrix (1, 1)

CD1_2

Double

Scale matrix (1, 2)

CD2_1

Double

Scale matrix (2, 1)

CD2_2

Double

Scale matrix (2, 2)

PLTSOLVD

Logical

Siril solver