Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) is an open standard file format and is the most commonly used digital file format for astronomical images. Files are suffixed .fits .fit or .fts. For an overview see the wikipedia entry and more detailed information at the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center FITS Support office website.


As well as containing an image, FITS files can contain metadata further describing the image, such as sky coordinates, the exposure length and the date and time the image was taken. These are stored and retrieved as keyword/value pairs.

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