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> its a bit of a shame that the fortran friendly file format still seems to the the most popular way to store this kind of data... but its easy to parse Haha,
by cyphar 10y ago
> its a bit of a shame that the fortran friendly file format still seems to the the most popular way to store this kind of data... but its easy to parse
Haha, don't get me started on FITS files. It's essentially impossible to analyse big postage stamps because you need to load the entire FITS file (and array) into memory. It's annoying that this is the standard we use.
> http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR - a huge collection of catalogues of stars, galaxies and other things that can be searched and browsed.
SIMBAD (also from that site) is incredible for cross-referencing and finding references for indexed bodies. I used it quite a lot while I was doing astro research.
- jheriko 10y agoI'm trying to remember the format of the LRO LOLA data... I never quite managed to put the tiles together right without seams everywhere. Too much container complexity for what it is...
- LeoPanthera 10y agoI used to work in IT at a place where FITS was the standard image format. Made me want to tear my hair out daily. ImageMagick supports FITS, and will happily convert it to PNG or some other rational format. (It will make FITS files too, if you're feeling masochistic.)
- cyphar 10y agoProblem is that you need to have the actual photon counts. NASA (for Kepler at least) uses FITS files to store essentially a 2d array of photon counts. So converting to another format is not actually helpful. But I agree that if someone is using it as an _image_ format they should reconsider their life decisions.
- LeoPanthera 10y agoSure, but for generating a quick thumbnail, it works just fine.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y agoIt looks like there's plenty of libraries out there that can deal with FITS files without bringing the whole thing into core.