Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Sun, 09/06/2020 - 15:20
Can anyone recommend a program for quickly looking at a lot of FITS files?
For instance, I have 600 images from an exoplanet transit run and need to quickly go through them to throw out bad images. It will take a while with MaximDL!
What would be cool is to have the windows file explorer show the file show the image in the preview pane.
Suggestions?
Thx,
George
I do time series, sometimes up to 2,000 images per night (Atik 314L+ images 2,75Mt/pic)
I use MunWin (C-Munipack) software to calibrate images, and if it is partially clear, to check and remowe bad images. Its fast, and no so sensitive number of pics.
If it's just for previewing images, that too will happen quickly, although that software is capable of many other things
https://sourceforge.net/projects/c-munipack/
Hi George,
In my experience, AIJ is usually faster than MaxIm. I use it to calibrate images of exoplanet and quickly inspect them to discard bad images.
I run it on Ubuntu 18.04 with 8 GB RAM bit I think Windows should perform as good as Linux.
Riccardo
I would recommend AstroImageJ. It can load a series of images as "virtual stack".
Thanks guys. I'll AIJ a try.
Just need to figure out how to do the virtual stack.thing.
Thx
George
Hello George,
opening bunch of images in AIJ as a virtual stack is trivial and reasonably fast:
File->Import->Image Sequence... -> (select a FITS file) -> specify files if needed and tick "Use virtual stack".
Then all the files get "opened" in an image window, below the image is a scrollbar to change between images.
However, I dare to recommend also professional tools, Saoimage DS9 namely. If you're confident with Python, then DS9 and python allow to do whatever you might need. See e.g. https://www.astrobetter.com/blog/2010/07/14/manipulating-and-viewing-fits-files-in-python-with-pyds9/
Best wishes,
Tõnis
Being that you already have MaximDL my recommendation is not the best solution, nevertheless I wanted to add PixIngisight to the list. There's a tool called "Blink" where you can load all the files and view them in a window. Next to the window there's another containing all the files in a list, allowing to go from file to file using the keyboard arrows, or using the play button that will automatically go from first to last (time between each file can go from (0.05 to 5 sec). From the list you can check/uncheck the files and those who are selected can be copied or moved to another destination.
Juan Pablo
None of my fits viewers will display spectrograph data file, such as those downloaded from AAVSO. Can anyone recommend a viewer that will do this?
Plotspectra fro here
https://1drv.ms/f/s!AvXqhKI5kEGRjEhdaQ6jaj8AHx_L
Terry
ASIFitsviewer from ZWO, free and fast.
I use MaxIm / View / Animate at 0.2 or 0.5 seconds per image.
I write down the approximate file number having a satellite or the range having a cloud.
The go back and click through the small subset.
I can clean up 300 or so in a couple minutes.