How to convert fits file into ASCII file using IRAF?

nishahansraj · Joined: 19 Sep 2009 Posts: 8

I have a fits file. It is actually a spectra. When I use splot <filename>.fits I get a plot of spectra of an object which is normalized amplitude (y-axis) versus wavelength (x-axis). I would like to extract the data, get two columns one which would give me normalized amplitude in the range of 0-1 while the other column will give me wavelength. I would like to know how I can do that in IRAF.

nishahansraj · Joined: 19 Sep 2009 Posts: 8

I used wtextimage...But it gives me the following error:

cl> wtextimage
Input image file: lwr05969mxhi.fits
Output text file: lwr05969.txt
Unable to open parameter file `uparm$daowtexte.par'

Can you tell whats the problem?

fitz · Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 9:15 am Post subject:

The MINMAX task will find the max value of the spectrum, divide by that to produce the normalized spectrum, them WSPECTEXT to write the ascii output.

Your message about the uparm problem either means the uparm directory doesn't exist or you can't write to it, e.g. you copied a login.cl from another machine or logged in using another user's login.cl. A new MKIRAF should fix it, the task still ran but the parameters were saved.

-Mike[/url]

nishahansraj · Joined: 19 Sep 2009 Posts: 8

Where can i find MINIMAX task in iraf package?

fitz · Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2009 3:12 pm Post subject:

MINMAX (not minImax) is part of the default IMUTIL package and should be visible when you log in.

anubu · Joined: 13 May 2010 Posts: 1

When I use WSPECTEXT to convert my fits spectra into an ascii file, the result is just a column with the intensity values of the spectra, but the wavelength values aren't there.

fitz · Posted: Sat May 15, 2010 4:49 am Post subject:

Does the SLIST task see a valid spectral WCS in the image? WSPECTEXT is basically a script wrapper about the LISTPIXELS task to dump the values, but even without a WCS you should still see the pixel number in the output. Could you post the spectra's header or else upload the image to ftp://iraf.noao.edu/pub?

StarryEyed · Joined: 24 Mar 2011 Posts: 6

I got a better understanding of this issue by reading through this post and this (http://www.iraf.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1462787&sid=e74cd735b22f567658feaefe1e542177&sid=e8908484df3b34a1b51f6561a78c3e92) post. The whole thing about byte numbers and multiples is where I figured it out, i didn't realize how much needed to be compatible software wise in order to get some of this stuff to work. Has anybody tried to run Datanumen pst repair, IRAF, and Ubuntu in cohesion?