Windows command line FITS tools

[drjolo]

SGPro does not offer subframing for its sequences, and that would be very useful for variable star observing, so I will not end up with 60GB of data after one observing night (16Mpx camera). So I figured out I will write a script that will be invoked after each target end and will crop FITS files from selected folder. Do you know any windows command line tool that I could use to crop FITS file and preserve FITS headers? I tried with ImageMagick, it crops quick and fine, but also deletes FTIS header entries  

Edited November 1, 2019 by drjolo

[MCinAZ]

I've used FTOOLS (https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftools/) for this sort of thing in the past, though in a native Linux environment. Installation documentation mentions that you can run on Windows using Cygwin, or of course in a VM running Linux. There's also the CFITSIO library, which is very useful if you want to write your own code.

[JamesF]

I was also thinking FTOOLS, but hesitated to recommend them due to lack of any experience with them on Windows.

(And whilst I am here, I am organising my thoughts so I can answer your emails, Mike.  I'm just being a bit slow

James

[drjolo]

Thank you for hints, I will try it out. Meantime I found a way to do it with MaxIm DL (as long as you have MaxIm ) . Here is corresponding piece of vbs script:

' Declare variables.
Dim myDoc
Dim fileFormat
Dim filePath
 
'Initialize variables used in call to SaveFile method.
fileFormat = 3 'FITS
 
' Create a document object.
Set myDoc = WScript.CreateObject("MaxIm.Document")
filePath = "C:\path\to\file\"
myDoc.OpenFile filePath & "Sh2-135_60sec_filter1__0005.fit"
 
' Crop file Document.Crop (XOffset, YOffset, Width, Height )
myDoc.Crop 3600, 80, 500, 500
 
' Save result to disk under a new name.
myDoc.SaveFile filePath & "Sh2-135_60sec_filter1__0005_crop2.fit", fileFormat, false, 1 

myDoc.Close

 

Edited November 1, 2019 by drjolo