FITs Image Processing

Resources to help process images and selected FITS image files from various telescopes. Buttons on each card link to GitHub, click on the images to download the powerpoint or file.

Skip to FITS image files.

Image Processing

PPTs on image processing with various astronomical software. I prefer to use JS9-4L or just JS9 since these run in the browser requiring no install.

Other Software:

The National Schools Observatory, NSO, maintains a piece of software called LTImage which can be downloaded from their website here with good instruction sheets for students, example files, and a teacher lesson/PPT here as part of their making an RGB image activity.
The Las Cumbres Observatory, LCO, has instructions on using FITS Liberator and Photoshop here and FITS Liberator and GIMP here. In both cases the FITS Liberator software is used to convert the FITS files to TIFFS since Photoshop and GIMP can't read FITS files natively. Both of these examples contain videos, text instructions, and data files to download.

SAOImageDS9

Requires Install - great tool for viewing and analysing FITS. Excellent graphical interface.

JS9

Runs in browser. Easy to use. Alignment of RGB images can be an issue.

JS9-4L

Run in browser. The NASA MicroObservatory version of JS9. Even easier to use than JS9 and includes some handy image tools and tutorials.

AstroImageJ

The Astronomy version of ImageJ. Can be confusing without guidance. Does not require an install, download the files and run the executable.

Photometry with APT

Requires Install - Aperture Photometry Tool. A very easy to use piece of software.

FITS image files

Here are some FITS files that students and I have taken using Faulkes/LCO telescopes. They are stored on Google Drive. Clicking on the image will take you to the shared folder.

Other FITS Sources:

The National Schools Observatory activites which were linked above have FITS files for different objects to download.
Again the Las Cumbres Observatory has images to download in the activities linked above as well as their Hubble Tuning Fork activity here (students use the files to make their own Hubble Tuning Fork). You can also search the entire LCO archives which are located here for images (LCO activity on searching the archive here).

COMET P/2021 U3 (Attard-Maury)

8 time series images taken on the LCO 2-metre telescope of Comet P/2021 U3

Interacting Galaxies

RGB FITS files for some interacting galaxies in different stages of merging. Contains M51, NGC1316, NGC1487, NGC2207, NGC4038, and NGC6050. More on their way!