How do I read axy.fits

[Donald Bruns]

I am a new user, but this astrometry.net might be useful to me.  I use MaximDL for most of my astronomy imaging. I uploaded a nice FITS image, and the solution appeared to work.  Now I want to see the individual list of star matches and pixel coordinates.  I downloaded the axy.fits file, but MaximDL won't open it.  Word shpws the header, but nothing else.  Excel won't open it.  Same with corr.fits, rdls.fits, and wcs.fits.  Can anyone help a beginner?  I am not a programmer, by the way.

Thanks!

[Dustin Lang]

Hi,

These are FITS binary tables.  Are you using Windows?  Afraid I don't know of a simple reader for them on that platform; there is a program (tablist) in the Astrometry.net codebase to read them (and in cfitsio) but installing that on Windows is a pain (requires cygwin).

It's *possible* that the fv tool will do the trick, but their web site appears to be down at the moment...
http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftools/fv/

cheers,
--dstn

[Donald Bruns]

Thanks Dustin, that worked.  I downloaded and installed fv5.3 in my Windows10 machine, then opened the axy.fits file, then exported it as a text file, then opened it in Excel.  Its certainly not obvious, but now that I understand it, I can live with it!
Don