FITS Data Curation Primer

Abstract

From the primer: FITS, or Flexible Image Transport System, is a data format most widely used in astronomy to transfer scientific data and their associated metadata. FITS was developed in the late 1970s by astronomers in the USA and Europe to facilitate international data transfer between observatories. In astronomy, images of the night sky are treated as arrays of data to be analyzed. For this reason, FITS was designed to be a highly flexible format that can be used to store and transfer any number of n-dimensional arrays. This means that although its name contains “image,” FITS files often contain only non-image data such as one-dimensional spectra or tabular information. Most commonly, FITS files contain a combination of images and 2-dimensional data tables stored in rows and columns. In fact, FITS files can contain almost anything. Although the building blocks are simple, FITS files can have unlimited components, and therefore can become complex quickly.