Deprecated format: FITS

smittxxx

I noticed a warning message in Pixinsight today when transferring files for stacking. Is this something to be concerned about? Will the file format be updated in the future? I was using a ASI6200MM camera for my capture.

** Warning: Deprecated format: FITS
73 FITS keywords extracted
Reading FITS image: 16-bit integers, 1 channel(s), 6384x4258 pixels: done

. . . . .

** Warning: The FITS format does not define an unambiguous orientation of pixel data. The coordinates read on the image may be wrong.

AstroDude42

smittxxx a quick search for pixinsight fits deprecated reveals two links to the PI forum giving more information:

On the second page it’s mentioned that a wrong value in the header of a FITS file might cause this warning in PI. Therefore it might be useful to provide the file to ZWO so the devs can investigate which header field is invalid.

Also the depreciation is just on the PI side, meaning they won’t implement new features in the FITS file format. I guess they just want to somehow make their own file format (XIFS) a new standard. This should not affect your imaging software taking FITS files as PI will still read those files.

Olli

smittxxx

thanks for the great information!

Kring

XISF & FITS are exact same image data, there is no conversion and no pixels are effected - which is just RAW image data. All XISF does is expand the meta data information stored before the image data in the file, it has more capabilities like retaining pixinsight processing history which can then be used for additional automation in pixinsight.