Introduction

SKIRT uses the CFITSIO library to handle FITS files. This library is written and maintained by NASA's HEASARC and can be downloaded at http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/fitsio/fitsio.html

CFITSIO is a pure C library that provides input/output capabilities for FITS files. The version included with SKIRT contains a subset of the source files in tarball cfitsio-3.49.tar.gz downloaded from the web site indicated above. No changes were made to any of the source files except for removing the #line compiler directives to avoid problems on Windows. Compiler warnings are explicitly disabled to avoid generating a myriad of warnings for code that has presumably been well tested by its authors.

The remaining text in this chapter is copied from the CFITSIO documentation, with minor modifications.

Library overview

CFITSIO is a machine-independent library of routines for reading and writing data files in the FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) data format. It can also read IRAF format image files and raw binary data arrays by converting them on the fly into a virtual FITS format file. This library is written in ANSI C and provides a powerful yet simple interface for accessing FITS files which will run on most commonly used computers and workstations. CFITSIO supports all the features described in the official definition of the FITS format and can read and write all the currently defined types of extensions, including ASCII tables (TABLE), Binary tables (BINTABLE) and IMAGE extensions. The CFITSIO routines insulate the programmer from having to deal with the complicated formatting details in the FITS file, however, it is assumed that users have a general knowledge about the structure and usage of FITS files.

The FITS file format

For more information about the FITS format, refer to the following web page: http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/heasarc/fits.html

FITS stands for Flexible Image Transport System and is the standard file format used to store most astronomical data files. There are 2 basic types of FITS files: images and tables. FITS images often contain a 2-dimensional array of pixels representing an image of a piece of the sky, but FITS images can also contain 1-D arrays (i.e, a spectrum or light curve), or 3-D arrays (a data cube), or even higher dimensional arrays of data. An image may also have zero dimensions, in which case it is referred to as a null or empty array. The supported datatypes for the image arrays are 8, 16, and 32-bit integers, and 32 and 64-bit floating point real numbers. Both signed and unsigned integers are supported.

FITS tables contain rows and columns of data, similar to a spreadsheet. All the values in a particular column must have the same datatype. A cell of a column is not restricted to a single number, and instead can contain an array or vector of numbers. There are actually 2 subtypes of FITS tables: ASCII and binary. As the names imply, ASCII tables store the data values in an ASCII representation whereas binary tables store the data values in a more efficient machine-readable binary format. Binary tables are generally more compact and support more features (e.g., a wider range of datatypes, and vector columns) than ASCII tables.

A single FITS file many contain multiple images or tables. Each table or image is called a Header-Data Unit, or HDU. The first HDU in a FITS file must be an image (but it may have zero axes) and is called the Primary Array. Any additional HDUs in the file (which are also referred to as 'extensions') may contain either an image or a table.

Every HDU contains a header containing keyword records. Each keyword record is 80 ASCII characters long and has the following format:

KEYWORD = value / comment string

The keyword name can be up to 8 characters long (all uppercase). The value can be either an integer or floating point number, a logical value (T or F), or a character string enclosed in single quotes. Each header begins with a series of required keywords to describe the datatype and format of the following data unit, if any. Any number of other optional keywords can be included in the header to provide other descriptive information about the data. For the most part, the CFITSIO routines automatically write the required FITS keywords for each HDU, so you, the programmer, usually do not need to worry about them.