Okay, this is a bit technical, but I am out of ideas and figured I would take a shot that someone here might have used this.

Fits liberator is a plug in for Photoshop that lets you open fits fitles with Photoshop. I am running it on a Mac running OS 10.3 and Photoshop CS. I have downloaded a Sloand Digital Sky Survey spectra from skyserver.sdss.org.

When I navigate to the file, Photoshop successfully generates a preview of the spectra and says it will open the file using fits liberator. Upon clicking to open it, however, I get the message that Photoshop has unexpectedly quit.

So, has anyone else tinkered with the plug in with success?

Any help would be appreciated.

Rob

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"Crackpot theories 1 : Regular theories a billion." Fry

While I have no idea about your Photoshop plugin, might I suggest downloading DS9? SAOImage DS9 is a program made specifically for dealing with fits images that a lot of astronomers use.

*falls to the ground twitching and foaming at the mouth at the mention of DS9*

As with all science based freeware, DS9 will make you want to stab your eyes out with your pocket protector. And it, too, seems to crash at random in a Windows environment. linux -> Windows never seems to work.

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Most imaging applications are sort of unhappy with one-dimensional data sets (such as the SDSS spectra). You can plot such data and retrieve numerical values with NRAO's fv (=fitsview), available for Windows systems (and maybe more) from http://www.cv.nrao.edu/fits/os-suppo...dows/fitsview/. That is, if you don't mind some dreaded scientific freeware. The trick is to open the image and display it (it will show the spectrum spread vertically) than ask to plot a profile. Use the right mouse button to define a horizontal line down the middle of the displayed spectrum and the plot will appear.

Thanks for your replies...maybe I should explain what I am trying to do.

My goal is to take an SDSS spectra and produce an image similar to the old spectra taken on photographic plates. THe SDSS spectra fits file has four rows. THe first row is the spectra, the second row is the contiuum subtracted spectra, the third row is the noise, and the fourth row is something called the mask array (which, as you can tell, I don't know what it is!)

So, what I need to do is extract the first row only, then stretch it vertically and play with the grayscale to produce the image.

I have tried DS9, Hands on Universe, FitsView, Specview, and Iris. Although I can get the spectra itself to display, I can't get the first row extrated and displayed the way I want.

If anyone is technically minded, the details of the SDSS spectra fits files are at SDSS Spectra Fits file details

Some of the stuff on this page I understand, some I don't.

Any ideas are appreciated as I am plum out of ideas at this point.

Thanks!

Rob

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"Crackpot theories 1 : Regular theories a billion." Fry