Open AccessFips: An OpenGL based FITS viewer
Author(s) -
M. Kornilov,
Konstantin Malanchev
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of physics. conference series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.21
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1742-6596
pISSN - 1742-6588
DOI - 10.1088/1742-6596/1525/1/012047
Subject(s) - opengl , computer science , computer graphics (images) , rendering (computer graphics) , software , graphics , graphical user interface , graphics processing unit , interface (matter) , artificial intelligence , operating system , visualization , bubble , maximum bubble pressure method
FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) is a common format for astronomical data storage. [1]. Even though astronomical data is now processed mostly using software, visual data inspection by a human is still important during equipment or software commissioning and while observing. We present Fips [2, 3], a cross-platform FITS file viewer released as open source software 1 . To the best of our knowledge, it is for the first time that the image rendering algorithms are implemented mostly on GPU (graphics processing unit). We show that it is possible to implement a fully-capable FITS viewer using OpenGL [4] interface, including movie support for representing 3D data. We also emphasise the advantages of using GPUs for efficient image handling.