Astro-TIFF support for astronomy

[han.k]

There is currently an initiative to make better use of the TIFF format for astronomy.

The idea is to use TIFF not only for saving an image but also to store the FITS header in a standard way into the TIFF file. So the exposure time, celestial position, date,  gain, astronomical solution , sensor temperature can be stored and read similar as for a FITS file.

Benefits:

• The TIFF compression algorithm makes the files smaller
• The files are readable by almost any image viewer.

Astro-TIFF as is called is already available in several programs and more are coming:

 

Image acquisition programs Astro-Tiff compatible:

• CCDCiel.  version 0.9.78 read/write
• Nina 2.0 beta version
• SharpCap (beta)
• INDIGO

 

Image processing programs:

• Siril version 1.0 just released
• ASTAP latest versions, read/write, conversion

In planning:

• APT
• AstroImageJ
• PixInsight

Other program can read TIFF but not the header currently. In INDI

The idea is to use this format for 16 bit raw images, so lights, darks, flats and flat-darks/bias files. These images are produced in the thousands. For these files compression is beneficial. The TIFF deflate compression is almost as good as the Rice compression as specified in the FITS standard 4.0. Any further processing results can be stored in FITS.

It is  possible to convert batch wise between TIFF and FITS possible without loosing header information.

The Astro-TIFF specification is here:
https://astro-tiff.sourceforge.io/

Note this specification is not set up as a replacement of FITS or other formats. It just proposes a better of use of the existing TIFF file format.

Han