FITSview Image Viewers

The FITSview family of viewers for FITS format astronomical images are available for Microsoft Windows (FITSview), Apple Macintosh (MacFITSview) and Unix/X-Windows (XFITSview) computer systems.

These viewers have easy to use graphical controls and will display astronomical images in the Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) format allowing zooming, scrolling, modifying the brightness, contrast and pseudo color and allow determination of celestial positions and the physical brightness units in the image. Both standard World Coordinate System (WCS) and Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) coordinates are supported. Positions and brightnesses of selected pixels may be logged to a text file and specified positions in the image may be marked.

Images may be compared by "blinking" them and 3 dimensional images may be viewed a plane at a time or in the form of a movie. Blanked pixels and all defined FITS image data types are supported. Normal or gzip compressed files may be used. The programs contain extensive online documentation and are suitable for use as external FITS image viewers for Web browsers.

These viewers are distributed by the (USA) National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) free of charge.