Re: Combining slices loses FITS header data

Posted by karenacollins on Sep 15, 2022; 3:26pm
URL: http://astroimagej.170.s1.nabble.com/Combining-slices-loses-FITS-header-data-tp1997p1998.html

Hi Bill,

It's actually the underlying ImageJ that isn't designed to handle fits header updates as operations are done on the images. The code used to combine the images is currently taken directly from ImageJ, so it isn't fits header aware and ends up dropping the header completely. Nevertheless, we are slowing trying to enhance the underlying ImageJ features to make them fits header aware, and this would be a good next candidate to work on. That said, AIJ will create a minimal fits header when the fits file is written to disk.

One reason we haven't done made this feature fits header aware already (beyond not having the resources) is that I'm not sure what header entries should be maintained and/or created, and how to create those from the individua images. Do you have a sense for what minimal set of headers that Vphot needs?

I'll also mention that Dennis Conti recently contributed AIJ code that creates an "AAVSO variable star report" from AIJ Multi-plot Main. I don't know if that would make AIJ directly capable of doing what you need to do in Vphot,  but I'll get the new version pushed to the AIJ Update server in the next couple of days.

In the meantime, we could continue to discuss how what fits headers should be created.

Karen