FITS presets

[georg.viehoever]

Hi,
we see many messages of people that have difficulties to import FITS images written by other applications (for instance Maxim) into PI. I know this is due to non-standard uses of FITS, such as using floats to encode ADU values, or using non-standard keywords.

Maybe it would be useful to offer a FITS import module that would provide a number of presets and pre-defined fixes for different source applications.

Georg

[mschuster]

+1. An ability to add new, custom, named settings would be nice to support the less common source apps. I would also like to specify an arbitrary PixelMath transformation.

Mike

[pfile]

yes, this is a good idea. +1

[Geoff]

This would have to take in all the possible permutations that the capturing software can give to the acquisition frames. I have seen a bit of mention about difficulties with Maxim using floating point fits. In fact, Maxim allows various settings, one of which is standard 16 bit integer. I have never had any problem importing my Maxim acquired images into PI.  Maybe there should be some responsibility for the user of the acquistion software to investigate how to use it properly rather than expecting Juan to solve their problems.
Geoff

[pfile]

true enough and that is the right solution, but the "i16 as f32 [0.0 - 65535.0]" format is common enough that it might warrant at least a preset. we've seen both maxim and nebulosity doing this.

[Riccardo A. Ballerini]

a batch command for correcting/adding fields like binning, filter id, author etc would be useful :-)

[Geoff]

Again I say use the acquisition software properly and all these will be in the file header.
Geoff

[georg.viehoever]

Perhaps something like an Assistant that evaluates statistics and keywords, and based on these gives hints on the correct settings (either in PI or in the source application) would be an option.
Georg

[Geoff]

Perhaps something like an Assistant that evaluates statistics and keywords, and based on these gives hints on the correct settings (either in PI or in the source application) would be an option.
Georg
Modify message

Good suggestion Georg.
Geoff

[Riccardo A. Ballerini]

I use Equinox for acquiring and the Batch PreProcess does not recognise binning, I had to ask a friend with some programming expertise to modify the script. With all the new updates the modding no longer works and I'm back to square one. 

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Riccardo,

The BPP script looks for the de facto standard keywords used to store pixel binning factors: XBINNING/YBINNING, BINNING, and CCDBINX/CCDBINY. If the Equinox application uses different keywords, then BPP won't recognize them unless you modify the script. Here we have another good example of interoperability problems caused by the FITS format: a poorly defined format, unable to standardize even something as essential as binning factors.

Do you know what keywords are being used by Equinox to store pixel binning information in FITS headers?