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The FITS Support Office
at NASA/GSFC
What is FITS?
- The standard data format used in astronomy
- Stands for 'Flexible Image Transport System'
- Endorsed by NASA and the International Astronomical Union
- Much more than just another image format (such as JPEG or GIF)
- Used for the transport, analysis, and archival storage of scientific data sets
- Multi-dimensional arrays: 1D spectra, 2D images, 3D+ data cubes
- Tables containing rows and columns of information
- Header keywords provide descriptive information about the data
- Supports state-of-the-art data compression methods
- See also the descriptions on the Wikipedia and Library of Congress Web sites.
Online FITS format Verifier
- Test whether a FITS file conforms to the FITS format requirements
Information about FITS
- News: latest news regarding FITS
- Documentation: user's guides, definition documents and other FITS papers
- World Coordinate System (WCS) documents and software
- Sample FITS files
- FITS I/O libraries to read and write FITS files from various computer languages
- FITS image viewers and image format converters
- General FITS Utility software including a FITS conformance verifier
- FITS keyword data dictionaries which define existing keyword usage
- FITS conventions used within the FITS community.
- Other FITS resources - newsgroups, web sites, and the IAU FITS Working Group
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Last revised: Thursday, 10-Sep-2026 08:49:14 EDT
Contact us: fits @ fits.gsfc.nasa.gov
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