MATLAB Programming

7 Working with Scientific Data Formats
Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) Files
MATLAB includes functions that let you import data using the Flexible Image
Transport System (FITS) format. FITS is the standard data format used
in astronomy, endorsed by both NASA and the International Astronomical
Union (IAU). FITS is designed to store scientific data sets consisting of
multidimensional arrays (1-D spectra, 2-D images, or 3-D data cubes) and
two-dimensional tables containingrowsandcolumnsofdata.
A data file in FITS format can contain multiple components, each marked
by an ASCII text header followed by binary data. The first component in a
FITS file is known as the primary, which can be followed by any number
of other components, called extensions, in FITS terminology. For more
information about the FITS standard, go to the official FITS Web site,
http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/.
The MATLAB FITS functions are described in the following sections:
• “Getting Information About FITS Files” on page 7-8
• “Importing Data from a FITS File” on page 7-9
Getting Information About FITS Files
To get information about the contents of a FITS file, use the fitsinfo
function. The fitsinfo function returns a structure containing the
information about the file and detailed information about the data in the file.
This example returns information about a sample FITS file included with
MATLAB. The structure returned contains fields for the primary component,
PrimaryData, and all the extensions in the file, such as the BinaryTable,
Image, andAsciiTable extensions.
info = fitsinfo('tst0012.fits')
info =
Filename: 'tst0012.fits'
FileModDate: '12-Mar-2001 18:37:46'
FileSize: 109440
Contents: {1x5 cell}
7-8